AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Magnus hummed ironically and arched one eyebrow at me. “One wonders how the cities made it through the summer.”
“I hate to think of even more people dying this coming winter,” I said, gloom infusing my voice as I continued checking books. “Isn’t there anything we could do to help them?”
“There is a great deal we could do,” Magnus said, leaving Peter at the table with the rest of the papers as he started to work his way around the room, opening cabinets and drawers. “We could provide the cities with food and supplies throughout the winter. We could send representatives to tell Sai how to run his kingdom. We could also attack and overwhelm what little power the cities still have.”
“We wouldn’t really do any of those things, would we?” Peter asked with a frown.
Magnus sent him a mock impatient look. “Of course not, darling. For one, I wouldn’t want to take men from our fields and workshops to be soldiers, and I doubt Jorgen would want to do so either. In times like these, food, clothing, and shelter are more important than conquest. For another, as I have said many times before, we cannot afford to lose one single life. Not ours, and not those of the city-dwellers.”
“It would be nice if we could just gut the cities and move everyone to a different kingdom, where someone could teach everyone to be sensible,” I said without really thinking about it.
Magnus laughed out loud as he opened a box next to the fire where wood was kept. “Wouldn’t that be lovely? Perhaps then each and every person on the frontier would learn to be useful instead of parading around like a bunch of—”
I closed the book I was looking through when Magnus stopped midsentence, then twisted to see him bent over, reaching into the wood box. “Did you find something?” I asked, abandoning the bookshelf and crossing the room to him.
“Perhaps,” Magnus said, his voice muffled. When he straightened, he had a ripped slip of paper in his hand and a broad smile on his face. “Well, well,” he said, grinning at the paper, then glancing into the box to see if there was more.
“What is it?” Peter asked, leaving the table to join us.
“It looks like a bit of a letter,” I said, wedging up against Magnus and craning my neck to see if I could make anything of the writing on it. “Maybe a letter that Hadrian burned after reading?”
“That is precisely what this is, my love,” Magnus said, rewarding me for my observation with a quick kiss.
As always, heat flooded me with his kiss, and I wanted more. That would have to wait until later, though.
“What does it say?” Peter pushed up against Magnus’s other side to look at the slip.
“Nothing of any importance whatsoever,” Magnus said with a broad smile, as if his words meant exactly the opposite.
“Then why are you crowing over it?” Peter asked, sending Magnus a flat look.
“Because I would recognize my brother’s handwriting anywhere,” Magnus said in triumph.
Both Peter and I took a startled, second look at the paper. The words and phrases it contained didn’t mean anything significant on their own. The words “capabilities”, “for-”, and “discov-” could have been anything. But the very fact that Magnus said they were written by the king of the Old Realm was all but proof that Hadrian was in regular correspondence with King Julius.
“There has to be more hidden in this house,” Magnus said with renewed energy, stepping away from the fire. “Neil, love, did you find anything in the books?”
“No,” I sighed. “I think they’re just books.”
“Check for hidden panels in the shelves,” Magnus said. “You too, Peter. We need to go over this room as if our lives depended on it. There is a distinct possibility that they might.”
I rushed back to the bookshelves with a renewed sense of excitement. I was of a mind with Magnus. There had to be further evidence of Hadrian’s treachery in the house, and with any luck, some of that might give us clues about what we could do to protect ourselves from the Old Realm.
I felt the hands of time moving even faster with every minute we searched the main room. The possibility of a maid showing up still felt real to me. If not a maid, then someone who considered Hadrian a friend. Maybe one of Sai’s other councilors who was seeking him out to complain about the afternoon’s meetings being called off. Or, more likely, to complain about the wolves.
I found nothing, no hidden panels, and was just about to give up hope when Peter called out an excited, “Magnus!”
I turned to find Peter kneeling beside the fireplace, leaning carefully into it so that he avoided the banked, smoldering logs. Magnus had made it all the way around the room to the kitchen, but he popped his head back in at Peter’s call, then rushed over to join Peter as he pulled a long, flat, metal box from inside the chimney.
I dropped everything to join them. I would have laughed at the way Peter had managed to end up with soot all over his sleeves, the front of his jacket, his face and hair. He would be furious about ruining his jacket, but at the moment, the charred box was infinitely more important.
“What a clever hiding place,” Magnus said, taking the box as Peter handed it to him and grinning at the mess Peter had made of himself as he did. “Not only is it difficult to discover, particularly if a larger fire graced the hearth, but whoever removes its secrets will be marked.”
“I need to clean up before we leave the house,” Peter said, rocking back to stand and looking at himself in disgust. He held his sooty hands out to his sides, but followed Magnus as he took the box into the kitchen. “But not until I see what’s in the box.”
“What are you doing, Magnus?” I asked following as well. “Why bring it in here?”
“Because, my sweet one, the point is to keep evidence of our presence here to a minimum,” Magnus told me, taking the box to the sink. “One does not do that by trailing soot all over.”
