Love Is Always Write Volume 4

to give him froze on his tongue, as he realized the man looked as though he had run from the opposite end of the kingdom without pause. He was also dressed in the uniform of the Three-headed Dragons, which did not bode well. "Majesty!"
    "Breathe," Sarrica said, half-afraid the man would pass out at his feet, concerned when he very nearly did that. Drawing in ragged breaths, the messenger held out a tri-folded piece of paper, affixed with a wax seal, his hand trembling from exhaustion. "From the High Chief of the Cartha Clans."
    Scowling, immediately worried, Sarrica took the missive and broke the black wax seal marked with the mountain and moon crest of the Cartha clans. He read the message, but it was difficult because the garbled syntax of the Cartha clans' unique brand of Tricemore was exceptionally hard to read. Not for the first time, he wished he had a talent for languages, but he and his tutors had agreed he lacked any ability in that quarter. "You may go," he told the messenger. "We'll get someone else to take the reply. Thank you."
    The messenger nodded, slumping with gratitude, offering a clumsy bow before he stumbled from the meeting room. Sarrica gestured to the council. "You're dismissed for the day. We'll resume these talks later."
    When they had gone, Sarrica rang the bell at his elbow, and a moment later his Steward, Oleander, slipped inside. "What's wrong, Majesty?"
    "I need a translator fluent in the Carthan brand of Tricemore," Sarrica said. "We've a message from the Cartha Clans, and given the state of the messenger it's not good news. I sense our mission there has gone awry in a very bad way." He shared a brief, troubled look with Oleander. If Cartha was contacting them, he dreaded learning what had become of his Dragons. He hoped Rene was still alive.
    He bent back to the message, glaring at it, but the shoddy penmanship combined with the difficult language only resulted in him understanding one word in seven.
    Annoyed with himself, he threw it on the table in disgust and waited impatiently while Oleander called for a translator who could read it. He picked up his cup of wine and drained it, barely resisting an urge to slam the cup back down. He picked up the letter again—and froze as he realized it was not one, but two, carefully stuck together so the second would go unnoticed. It was a trick he'd seen—and used—before many times when sending messages across the kingdoms.
    Peeling the pages apart, he frowned at the elegant handwriting—and the fact the words were in the Old Tongue. Sarrica could read it, but if told to write a missive under duress he was not at all confident he could do it, and certainly not as well as whoever had written this one.
    Majesty,
    Cartha has joined forces with Benta. Their goal is to remove you from the capital and decimate it in your absence, while killing you in the mountains. They used poison-tipped arrows and blades to decimate the Dragons. I've listed symptoms so that you might identify possible poisons. Stay away, be careful.
    Allen
    Allen? Not his vanished potential consort? Sarrica felt sick and guilty all over again, thinking of his behavior that day—and that it had somehow led to this horrible message.
    Whatever his disappointment in being sent some courtly pretty boy rather than a warrior as requested, he should not have acted as he did. He had intended to make amends at the luncheon, but Allen had never appeared. The men sent to find him had turned up only an empty room and word from the guards at the entrance that he had gone into the city. One hazy account of someone fitting his description had been found at a book vendor's stall, but after that the trail had gone cold.
    How had a journey into the city led to his being a captive of the Cartha Clans? What in the names of the gods was he doing with the Three-headed Dragons? The door opened, and he looked up at Oleander, ignoring the translator for the moment. "Prince Allen has been captured by Cartha; apparently he was with the Dragons. Cartha is in league with Benta, and apparently they have slaughtered my Dragons. I do not know how many remain."
    Motioning the translator close, he held out the original missive, and gave the secret one to Oleander. "Tell me what it says."
    The translator frowned, silent for several long minutes before he finally said, "Cartha has killed all the Dragons save four: The Captain, his second in command, the army's silver tongue, and the man who delivered this