Casket of Souls

way.”
    “If Danos did write the second one, then why go to all the trouble of having Caem put it in separately?” said Nyal. “It would have been safer to do it all at once.”
    “Perhaps he was being doubly cautious?” Beka suggested. “We should get this to Thero. Shall I call your courier?”
    “No,” said Klia. “Come with me.”
    They met Myrhini outside and Klia motioned for her to come, as well. The four of them walked in silence through the camp toward the ruined town. Half the regiment was here, and it took some time to wend their way among the lanes between the tents, but at last they reached the shattered gates. The sentries saluted Klia and let them pass.
    The streets that weren’t still in flames were largely deserted except for the scattered Plenimaran and Mycenian dead. Klia walked on, looking this way and that, until she settled on what appeared to be a deserted house. After a search to be sure, they gathered in the kitchen at the back of the building, which was lit by the red, shifting glow of distant flames.
    Klia took a small, painted wand from her purse and broke it, releasing the message sphere. “Thero, come to me. I need you,” she said softly, and touched the sphere with the tip of one finger. It sped away through the walls, in the direction of Rhíminee.
    “How will he find you here?” asked Beka.
    “Don’t worry. He will,” Myrhini told her with a smile.
    A few moments later Thero himself stepped from the shadows at the back of the room, dressed in a nondescript coat and boots rather than his usual blue robe. Concern showed clear on his face. “Are you hurt? What’s happened?”
    Klia laughed softly. “Nothing so dire. We have something for you.”
* * *
    It wasn’t the translocation spell that left Thero a bit dizzy. He’d waited months for such a summons. By the time he stepped out into the light, he’d managed to shake off the disappointment of finding the others with Klia, concerned instead at how thin she looked, and how drawn.
    “Thank you for coming so quickly,” Klia greeted him.
    “Has there been another attempt on your life?”
    “No.” She handed him two sheets of creased vellum. “Nyal saw one of Danos’s riders open this letter and put this smaller, coded one inside. He managed to steal it for me.”
    Thero took the pages from Klia and snapped his fingers, lighting the candle half melted on the mantelpiece over the hearth. “Hmmm. This isn’t good.”
    “It’s not true, Thero. I’ve never looted and my riders are forbidden to do it. Any gold captured goes to the queen.”
    “I have no doubt of that, Highness.”
    “We think Danos may not have written the coded one,” Beka told him.
    “Just going by the handwriting, I’d have to agree, but it’s best to be sure.”
    He set the coded message aside on the kitchen table and pressed the one from Danos between his palms. Images swirled across his mind’s eye: the goat that had given its skin, the man who’d scraped and stretched it, a few other people who’d used this particular page before Danos. He could have guessed at that last; the vellum hadn’t been scraped well of the last writing that had been on it, which still showed here and there under Danos’s strong script. And at last, there was the man himself. The letter itself was perfectly innocent, just the details of the siege that had no doubt destroyed this town, and salutations to relatives, friends, and Princess Elani.
    Turning to the coded message again, he began the same spell, with much the same results, except that the last person to write on it wasn’t the one they described to him, but a young soldier Beka identified as Corporal Caem.
    “It would appear we’ve been suspecting the wrong man,” said Myrhini.
    “Perhaps,” Klia replied. “Unless Danos knows what Caemis doing.” She paused and shook her head. “Are people really so sure that I’m a usurper?”
    Klia sounded so weary that if they’d been alone, Thero might have been tempted to take her into his arms. As if she’d read his thoughts, she said to the others, “Keep watch outside, please. I’ll just be a moment.”
    When they were alone, Klia went to the window. The ruddy light played over her face through the broken glass, giving her solemn features a mask-like appearance. “You haven’t happened to have become a truth knower, have you?”
    “I’m afraid not. But I do have a spell that might work just as well. It would be best to do it here. If