‘Yes, ma’am.’

There was that now-familiar lurch, and the moonlight faded into gray. Then they were back in bright autumn sunshine on the road a few miles outside Korvan, and their friends were staring at them in astonishment.

‘What went wrong?’ Sephrenia asked Flute.

‘Our glorious leader here was wool-gathering,’ Flute replied with heavy sarcasm. ‘We just took a little sidetrip to Demos.’

‘Demos!’ Vanion exclaimed. ‘That’s on the other side of the world!’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘It’s the middle of the night there right now. We were on the road to Kurik’s farm. Maybe our stalwart commander here felt lonesome for Aslade’s cooking.’

‘I can live without these “stalwart commanders” and “glorious leaders”,’ Sparhawk told her tartly.

‘Then do it right.’

There was a certain desperation in the flicker of darkness at the edge of Sparhawk’s vision this time, and a faint flicker of harried confusion. Sparhawk did not even stop to think. ‘Blue Rose!’ he barked to the Bhelliom, bringing up his other hand so that both rings touched the deep blue petals, ‘destroy that thing!’

He felt a brief jolt in his hands and heard a sizzling kind of crackle behind him.

The shadow that had dogged their steps for so long, which they had thought at first to be Azash and then the Troll-Gods, gave a shrill shriek and began to babble in agony. Sparhawk saw Sephrenia’s eyes widen.

The shadow was crying out, not in Zemoch or Trollish, but in Styric.

Chapter 8

‘Well now, yer Queenship,’ Caalador was saying, ‘I don’t know ez I’d stort a-dancin’ in the streets jist yet. Them fellers over t’ Interior’s bin a-doin’ ever’thang but a-nailin’ th’ doors shet t’ keep us from a-puttin’ our hands on this yere pertic’ler set o’ files, an’ now they turns up sorta unexpected-like amongst a hull buncha others – which I’d swear a oath to that I already looked over ‘bout four er five times my own self. Don’t that smell jist a bit like a dead fish t’ you?’

‘What did he say?’ Emperor Sarabian asked.

‘He’s suspicious,’ Ehlana translated. ‘He thinks that our discovery of these files was too easy. He may just have a point.’

They had gathered again in the royal apartment in what was by now generally called ‘Ehlana’s Castle’ to discuss the surprising discovery of a hitherto missing set of personnel files. The files themselves were stacked in heaps upon the tables and the floor of the main sitting room.

‘Do you always have to complicate things, Master Caalador?’ The Emperor’s expression was slightly pained. As he habitually did now, Sarabian was wearing western-style clothes. Ehlana felt that this morning’s choice of a black velvet doublet and pearl-grey hose was not a happy one. Black velvet made Sarabian’s bronzetinted skin look sallow and unhealthy.

‘I’m a professional swindler, your Majesty,’ Caalador replied, dropping the dialect. ‘I’ve learned that when something seems too good to be true, it probably is.’

Stragen was looking into one of the files. ‘What an amazing thing,’ he said. ‘Someone in the Ministry of the Interior seems to have discovered the secret of eternal youth.’

‘Don’t be cryptic, Stragen,’ Ehlana told him, adjusting the folds of her blue dressing gown. ‘Say what you mean.’

He took a sheet of paper out of the file he was holding. ‘This particular document looks as if it were only written last week – which it probably was. The ink’s barely dry.’

‘They are still using those files, Milord,’ Oscagne said, ‘despite the inconvenience. It’s probably just a recently filed document.’

Stragen took out another sheet of paper and handed both documents to the Foreign Minister. ‘Do you notice anything unusual about these, your Excellency?’

Oscagne shrugged. ‘One of them’s fairly new, the other’s turned yellow with age, and the ink’s faded so badly you can hardly read it.’

‘Exactly,’ Stragen said. ‘Don’t you find it just a little odd that the faded one’s supposed to be five years younger than the fresh one?’

Oscagne looked more closely at the two sheets of paper. ‘Are you trying to say that they falsified an official document?’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s a capital offense!’

‘Let me see those,’ Sarabian said.

Oscagne handed him the documents.

‘Oh, yes,’ Sarabian noted, ‘Chalba. Kolata’s been singing his praises for the past fifteen years.’ He held up the suspicious document. ‘This purports to be his appointment to the ministry. It’s dated no more than a week after Kolata took office.’ He looked at Stragen. ‘You think this has been substituted for the original?’

‘It certainly looks that way, your Majesty.’

Sarabian frowned. ‘What could there possibly have been on the original that they’d have wanted to conceal?’ he asked.

‘I have no idea, your Majesty. There must have been something, though.’ He leafed through the file. ‘This Chalba’s rise in the ministry was positively meteoric. It looks as if he was getting promoted every time he turned around.’

‘That sounds a bit like the sort of thing one does for a close friend,’ Oscagne mused, ‘…or a relative.’

Sarabian smiled faintly. ‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Your brother Itagne seems to have risen quite nearly as rapidly.’

Oscagne made a face. ‘That wasn’t my idea, your Majesty. Itagne’s not a career officer of the Foreign Ministry. I press him into service in emergencies, and he always extorts promotions out of me. I’d rather not have anything to do with him at all, but he’s so brilliant that I don’t have any choice. My younger brother’s intensely competitive, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that he has his eye on my position.’

‘This fallacious document Stragen found might give us a place to start,’ Caalador mused. Caalador frequently dipped in and out of the dialect like a leaping trout. ‘If Kolata took a cluster of friends and relatives into the ministry with him, wouldn’t it stand to reason that they’d be the ones he’d trust the most?’

‘It would indeed,’ Stragen agreed, ‘and we’d be able to tell from the dates on their appointments just who these cronies of his are, and his cronies would have been the people he’d have been most likely to confide in when he decided to take up treason as a hobby. I’d guess that anybody whose appointment coincided with Kolata’s elevation to office is probably involved in this business.’

The ones ez is still alive, anyway,’ Caalador added. ‘A feller what turns down the chance t’ join some friends in the treason business ain’t got too much in the way o’ life-expectancy after he sez no.’

‘May I speak, your Majesty?’ Alean asked Ehlana timidly.

‘Of course, dear.’

The gentle girl was holding one of the files in her hands. ‘Does ink always fade and paper turn yellow as the document gets older?’ she asked them in a barely audible voice.

‘Indeed it does, child,’ Sarabian laughed. ‘It drives librarians crazy.’

‘And if there was something written down in one of these packages of paper that the people at the Inferior Ministry didn’t want us to…’

Oscagne suddenly howled with laughter.

Alean blushed and lowered her head. ‘I’m just being silly,’ she said in a very tiny voice. ‘I’m sorry I interrupted.’

‘The place is called the Interior Ministry, Alean,’ Melidere told her gently.

‘I preferred her term,’ Oscagne chuckled.

‘May I be excused, my Queen?’ Alean asked, her face flaming with mortification.

‘Of course, dear,’ Ehlana replied sympathetically.

‘Not just yet, Ehlana,’ Sarabian cut in. ‘Come here, child,’ he said to Alean.

She crossed to his chair and curtsied a bit awkwardly. ‘Yes, your Majesty?’ she said in a scarcely audible voice.

‘Don’t pay any attention to Oscagne,’ he said. ‘His sense of humor gets the best of him sometimes. What were you going to say?’

‘It’s silly, your Majesty. I’m just an ignorant girl. I shouldn’t have spoken.’

‘Alean,’ he said very gently, ‘you were the one who suggested that we take all the files of all the ministries out of the government buildings and spread them out on the lawns. That turned out to be an excellent idea. I don’t know about these others, but I’ll listen to anything you have to say. Please go on.’

‘Well, your Majesty,’ she said, blushing even harder, ‘as I understand what Milord Stragen just said, those people wanted to hide things that were written down, so they wrote new papers and put them in place of the ones they didn’t want us to see.’

‘It looks as if that’s what they’ve done, all right.’

‘Well, then, if new paper’s white, and old paper’s yellow, wouldn’t that sort of mean that anybody whose package has white papers mixed in with yellow ones has something to hide?’

‘Oh, good God!’ Stragen exclaimed, smacking himself on the forehead with his open palm. ‘How could I have been so stupid?’

‘And I went right along with you,’ Caalador added. ‘We both walked right over the top of the simplest and most obvious answer. How could we have missed it?’

‘If I wanted to be spiteful, I could say that it was because you’re men, Master Caalador,’ Baroness Melidere smiled sweetly, ‘and men just adore unnecessary complications. It’s not nice to be spiteful, though, so I won’t say it.’ She gave the two thieves an arch little look. ‘I may think it, but I won’t say it,’ she added.

‘It’s very easily explained, your Majesty,’ Teovin replied calmly. ‘You’ve already touched on it yourself.’ Teovin, the Director of the Secret Police at the Interior Ministry, was a dry, spare sort of man with no really distinguishing features. He was so ordinary-looking that Ehlana felt him to be an almost perfect secret policeman.

‘And what is this brilliant explanation that I’ve already discovered without even noticing it?’ Sarabian asked acidly.

Teovin held up the yellowed sheet the Emperor had just given him. ‘As your Majesty pointed out, the ink on this document has faded rather badly. The information in our files is vital to the security of the Empire, so we can’t let time erase the documents. The files are constantly reviewed, and any document that shows signs of approaching illegibility is copied off to preserve it.’

‘Why hasn’t that one in your hand been updated then, Teovin?’ the Emperor asked. ‘It’s barely legible.’

Teovin coughed diffidently. ‘Ah – budgetary considerations, your Majesty,’ he explained. ‘The Chancellery of the Exchequer saw fit to cut our appropriation this year. They’re strange over at Exchequer. They always act as if it were their own personal money.’

‘They do rather, don’t they?’ Sarabian laughed. The Emperor, Ehlana noted, was very fast on his feet, instantly adjusting to surprises. ‘Chancellor Gashon’s hands start to shake every time I start talking about replacing broken tiles in the throne-room. I’m glad we had the chance to straighten this out, my friend. I commend you for your devotion to your duty and your concern for the documents which have been placed in your care.’

‘I live but to serve, your Majesty.’ Teovin paused. ‘I wonder – might I have a word with Interior Minister Kolata? There are some matters – strictly routine, of course – that should be brought to his attention.’

Sarabian laughed. ‘Afraid not, old boy,’ he said easily. ‘You wouldn’t be able to keep his attention for very long today.’

‘Oh?’

‘He got some tainted fish at supper last night, and he’s been vomiting into a pail since just after midnight. We keep checking the pail, but his toenails haven’t come out as yet. Poor Kolata. I can’t remember when I’ve seen a man so sick.’

‘Do you think it’s serious, your Majesty?’ Teovin sounded genuinely concerned.

‘Oh, probably not. We’ve all come in contact with bad food before, so we know what to expect. He thinks he’s going to die, though. I’d imagine that he rather wishes he could. We have a physician in attendance. He’ll be all right tomorrow – thinner, maybe, and a little shaky, but recovered enough to look after business. Why don’t you come by in the morning? I’ll make sure that you get in to see him.’

‘As your Majesty commands,’ Teovin said, dropping to the floor to grovel formally before the Emperor. Then he rose to his feet and left the audience chamber.

They waited.

‘He’s gone,’ Mirtai reported from the doorway. ‘He just went out into the courtyard.’

‘Quick, isn’t he?’ Caalador noted. ‘He didn’t so much as turn a hair when your Majesty handed him that document.’

‘He was ready for us,’ Stragen said. ‘He had his story prepared well in advance.’

‘His explanation is plausible, Stragen,’ Sarabian pointed out.

‘Of course, your Majesty. Secret policemen are very creative. We know that Interior Minister Kolata’s involved in treason. He wouldn’t be much of a threat all by himself, so his entire agency’s suspect. We almost have to assume that every department head is involved. As Caalador so colorfully pointed out, anyone who didn’t join in probably got himself defenestrated just as soon as he objected.’

‘De-what?’ Melidere asked.

‘Defenestrated. It means getting thrown out of a window – a high one, usually. It doesn’t accomplish very much to push somebody out of a ground-floor window.’

‘There isn’t really such a word, Stragen. You’re making it up.’

‘No, honestly, Baroness,’ he protested. ‘It’s a real word. It’s a common solution to the problem of politically inconvenient people.’

‘I think we’re straying here,’ Ehlana told them. ‘Sarabian, why did you make up that story about Kolata and the bad fish?’

‘We don’t want his underlings to find out that we’re keeping him drugged into insensibility most of the time, do we, Ehlana?’