Page 26 of Sword & Sacrifice

Mirinda stood off to the side, hands demurely clasped in front of her. “Your Majesties.”

Silas thought he would be the only one eager to dive back into the mountains of paperwork, so he was surprised to see how many investigation committee members had joined him. They couldn’t hold a trial without any of the traitors present, so the investigation was officially on hold. Silas understood why Archer would want Varro’s files to give him insight into the ex-general’s potential allies. But Mirinda, Quentin, and Felicity had also come straight to the Council Chambers. Only two members were missing: Mr. Tomlin, the Guild’s current representative, and Lord Pryce, the nobles’ representative.

“Don’t you have other work to do, Mirinda?” Silas asked. He tried to subtly extricate his hand, but Archer held onto it for a moment longer, reluctant to let go. Except the few moments they stole together in the night, they’d hardly seen each other in the past few days. Eventually, he finally released Silas’ hand and focused on the work ahead.

Mirinda’s hands clenched briefly before she relaxed. “With everything that’s happened, I fear these documents are more important than ever. I’m concerned about the knowledge we’ll lose if anything else were to happen to them.”

Of course. The files aren’t just evidence against the advisers—they’re everything the old council used in their daily work. Mirinda was the only member of the old council present, so she would need to rely on these documents to fill in any informational gaps.

“You’re right. The Council Chambers are well guarded, but we’ve learned how vulnerable the palace can be. I’m already planning to move the bulk of the files into the Vault.”

“You’re what?” Quentin squeaked. He knelt on the floor near Silas, pawing through Jacoby’s boxes. “You can’t lock them in the Vault!”

“I know you need Jacoby’s ledgers,” Silas said, holding out his hands in a calming gesture. “Anything current can remain here for daily review, or we can make copies.”

“You said that last time,” Quentin insisted, tears springing to his eyes. “About Jacoby’s last ledger, and now it’s all burned up and … and if we miss payments, it’s your fault!”

“Quentin,” Silas snapped. If they’d been alone, he probably would have continued to placate the treasury aide, but ever since Lord Garan had shown he would eagerly step over Silas’ corpse to grasp the throne, Silas’ tolerance for being disrespected in public had shriveled to the size of a dried pea. “A few missed payments are the least of our concerns.” He took a deep breath through his nose and more calmly stated, “If you’re too emotional to work right now, you should take the next few days off.”

“No! I mean,” Quentin flinched back, wrapping one arm protectively around one of Jacoby’s boxes. “No, I can work. I’ll focus on making copies of what I need.”

Silas thought that was the end of the discussion and began to turn away when Quentin added one more thing.

“But I don’t think the Vault has space for all of this,” he said, waving at the dozens of boxes. “There’s probably somewhere better.”

Silas glanced at Mirinda, silently inviting her input. She considered the question for a moment before saying, “The Vault is fireproof and warded against theft, but it will be a little cramped inside if we attempt to store all the documents.”

Quentin nodded aggressively in agreement.

“But I agree that Alistair’s would be safest there, after the … incident.”

Silas shuddered as he thought of the spiders scurrying out from Alistair’s boxes. Whether they were real or an illusion, he suspected they weren’t Alistair’s only magical protection. Silas hoped to make the transfer sooner rather than later, but like everything else about cleaning up the traitor’s mess, it couldn’t be simple. “I suppose we’ll still have to determine the most important documents. Staff files and the like won’t need the same levels of protection.”

A soft sigh of relief came from behind him. Even though Felicity hadn’t volunteered her opinion, she’d clearly been listening.

“I still don’t think the Vault is the best option,” Quentin said, but his protest was so meek that Silas could easily ignore it.

Since he knew he wanted to lock Alistair’s documents away, Silas decided to start there. He grabbed a box marked ‘Alistair Letters’ and brought it over to the end of the table where Archer sat.

Archer had emptied a box of Varro’s files onto the table, spreading them out before him. He took careful notes, writing slowly with his left hand hovering above the page so that he wouldn’t smear the ink. For anyone else, it would have been faster to dictate his thoughts to an assistant. For Archer, it might take the assistant longer to understand what he wanted than for him to simply write everything himself.

Silas smiled as he considered offering his own services. While going from ‘king’ to ‘assistant’ would be a steep demotion, it would be a pleasant change for his only concerns to be whether or not he deciphered Archer’s words correctly. To let someone else deal with the traitors, investigate the fire, forge alliances, rebuild the palace, reform a kingdom. The list was endless, and Silas would have preferred to write it all down and pass it off to someone else rather than check items off himself.

Sensing Silas’ gaze, Archer looked up. He’d once seemed imposing and expressionless, but now Silas could detect the slight downturn of his lips, the crease in his brow as his thick eyebrows inched toward each other. Silent questions were written clearly in every minor change of his face: Is everything all right? How can I help? Is this a problem I can swing my sword at?

Silas wanted to kiss his brow in silent answer. Everything’s fine. No, you don’t need to start a fight. Since they had a small audience of advisers and guards, Silas restrained himself and only shrugged in response. He set Alistair’s box of letters down and settled next to Archer. Too close for the ridiculous amounts of files they both sorted through, but Silas didn’t care, choosing to limit himself to a smaller space in order to enjoy the reassuring pressure of Archer’s thigh against his under the table.

As Silas opened the lid on the box, he braced for more spiders, a cloud of poisonous gas, or some other magical trap. Nothing happened. After a moment, he finally relaxed. Alistair is dead. His magic probably died with him.

The files inside the box mostly consisted of letters Alistair had exchanged with representatives of other countries. At first, Silas skimmed them and set them off to the side, but then he noticed something interesting about the letters. While some of them only contained one side of the story, others contained both Alistair’s initial letter and a reply from the recipient.

Silas had seen two types of messenger spells before. The first was simpler and only allowed the letter to be sent one way. Adelaide practiced this spell most often, because the supplies were cheaper, and she usually only used the spell to communicate with other mages. Valerian, however, specialized in the second spell, and had helped Silas exchange letters with Archer.

An idea occurred to him, and Silas gathered all the potentially magical letters together and began scratching the wax seals off until he had a solid blue ball of wax. Then he grabbed a quill and a fresh piece of parchment. He paused before writing the letter, considering what to say.

His first thought was to write to Penn and Valerian. Ever since the fire, their communication had been cut off. Silas wasn’t sure what that looked like on Penn’s end—if he was still writing updates in the book every day, only to receive silence in return, or if he knew something had gone wrong. But he was with Valerian, who could send magical messages. If they hadn’t reached out yet, they must not know anything was wrong and believed all their reports had gone through successfully.

But what if they hadn’t reached out because Valerian had run out of his messenger supplies? Silas thought guiltily of the letters he’d sent while they traveled together. Had he used up all of Val’s materials? They thought Valerian would settle in at the palace, have a chance to restock; they hadn’t expected him to turn around after only a few days and chase after Penn.