Theodosius Valkorion's Arc

Chapter 17 of 22

Heinrich's column filled the yard at dawn. The pass was held, but Theodosius did not sleep. A steward had ridden out of this keep an hour before the oath ceremony. Someone under his own roof had sold the time and place to an unknown buyer. Whoever that spy was, they would sell the next order too. He called Master Inag Divondûn to the map room before the sun cleared the wall. The head of the Clandestine Guard came in black plate, the triangle visor down. Serett came behind him in a servant's coat, hood up. Two of the three people who knew Serett's face stood in this room. The third thought him dead. "Name him," Theodosius said. "I cannot," Inag said. "Not yet." "Then we bait him." Serett set a folded page on the table. "Four orders. Four rooms. Four men who could have carried the steward's word out." Theodosius read the page. A scribe. A gate captain. A kitchen steward. A junior chaplain who served the Prime Consul at the ceremony. "Each gets a different lie," Theodosius said. "Different route for a grain train from the capital. Different day. Only one route reaches the enemy." "Same trick as the lords," Inag said. "It worked on lords." Serett nodded once and left through the side door. The orders went out at noon under the Prime Consul's seal, since the chaplain would only trust a page that passed his master's hand. The Prime Consul signed each without reading, then folded his hands in his sleeves. "I would rather sign a lie for you than bury another oath," he said. Theodosius waited two days. On the third morning Serett came back through the side door and set a strip of parchment on the map. "Enemy scouts moved on the west road at dusk yesterday," Serett said. "West road was the gate captain's lie." "Only his?" "Only his." Theodosius sent Peacekeeper Heron with six men to the gatehouse before the captain finished his watch. Heron was one of the four hundred who had held the south stretch under Longhall. He wore the small blue star on a dented plate and did not speak when he took the captain by the arm. They walked him across the yard in daylight, so every servant would see. The captain broke in the cell within the hour. He named his handler: a factor in the capital who paid in foreign coin and had bought word from three other keeps as well. Serett wrote the name down and left again without a cloak. Theodosius stood at the map table with the strip of parchment under his palm. The leak in his keep was closed. The buyer sat in his own capital, and had been buying from more than one roof. His next move would have to travel behind Longhall and the Adamantine Guard, back through a city that was no longer his to trust.