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made them appear healthy, or at least alive; but all it did for Baldezar was highlight the sharp crags of his face. I could make out a similar collection of jutting angles and projections beneath the ink-stained tunic, which hinted at the sparseness of his frame. He let his eyelids droop halfway closed as he regarded me.
    “I hope you are not here for the work you commissioned,” he said. “I told you it would not be ready until next week. I’ve not even received the proper linen paper from the presser yet.”
    I waved my hand. “No, no rush on that. Take your time.” I was having him do a bit of forgery for my sister, but it wouldn’t hurt to let her wait a bit. It might even teach her some patience, though I had my doubts. “I’ve come here for your opinion on something.”
    The scribe nodded as if this made perfect and natural sense, which I’m sure it did to him. He was Baldezar, after all.
    I reached into my ahrami pouch and drew out the piece of paper I had taken from Athel.
    Baldezar’s eyebrows formed themselves into a brief pair of peaks, then settled down again. “May I?” He held out his reedlike fingers. I obliged, and he held the strip of paper up to the light.
    “And what are you looking for here?” he asked after a long moment.
    Even after giving him the paper, I hesitated. My instincts were to keep as many people out of my business as possible. I had to remind myself why I had come here in the first place.
    “I’m hoping it’s a cipher you might recognize,” I said.
    “As in a coded message?”
    I nodded.
    “Where did you get it?”
    I regarded the Jarkman silently.
    “I only ask,” he said, “because the provenance might help me to—”
    “It doesn’t matter where I got it,” I said sharply, my fatigue getting the better of my patience. “What matters is what you can tell me about it.”
    “I see.” Baldezar rubbed the paper between his fingers. “Do you know what it pertains to?”
    “This is dusty stuff, Jarkman—don’t play the Boman.”
    Baldezar lifted the side of his mouth in distaste. “I may understand your canting, Drothe, but it doesn’t mean I enjoy hearing it. Use the imperial tongue in my presence, or get out.”
    I snapped forward in my chair, stopping myself just before I came out of it. Baldezar’s eyes went wide as he almost fell back in his own.
    I took a long, slow breath.
    “All right,” I grated. “In plain Imperial, I’m not happy about what that paper implies. In fact, I’m downright pissed. I’m having a bad day because of what’s on that paper, and I don’t expect I’ll be the only one. Now, we both know what that means, so my advice is to tell me what you see here. Otherwise, my using the cant won’t be the only thing you don’t enjoy.”
    Baldezar opened his mouth, shut it, and cleared his throat. “A code, you say? Intriguing.” He laid the strip out on his desk, studying it. After a minute or so, his hands stopped shaking. Baldezar rotated the strip a few times, looking at the markings from all angles, and then turned it blank side up. He ran his fingers over the paper and hemmed to himself. Then he sat back.
    “I don’t know.”
    “What?”
    Baldezar held up his hands placatingly. “It’s not any language I recognize, if it is a language at all. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the markings. Nothing indicates a code or message of any sort.”
    I stood up and leaned over the table. “There’re pystos and immus right there,” I said, pointing. “And what about the repeating marks . . . here . . . and here, and here again? And these two here and here. Those might be fragments of common cephta.”
    “Not everyone uses imperial ideographs for writing, Drothe.”
    No, just most of the people in the empire. “Okay, so maybe they’re those things the western Client Kingdoms use for writing. . . .”
    “Letters?”
    “Right, letters.”
    Baldezar let out a long sigh. “Perhaps. Or they might be a portion of an