10 – Aftermath by Asprin, Robert

Setios had really left in a hurry.

“Fine, hold the light were it is, darling,” Samlor said to his niece as calmly as if he were asking her to pass the bread at table. The casket wasn’t anything which the Cirdonian remembered from his youth, but the family crest-the rampant wyvern of the House of Kodrix-was enameled on the lid. Beneath it was carved in Cirdonian script the motto Samlor’s parents had never forgiven him for running high-risk, high- profit caravans like a commoner instead of vegetating in noble poverty. But they’d lived well-drunk well, at least-on the flies he snatched for them, and the money Samlor provided had bought his sister a marriage with a Rankan noble.

Which couldn’t save Samlane from herself, but was the best effort possible for a brother who didn’t claim to be a god.

The lid did not rise under gentle pressure from his left thumb. There was no visible catch or keyhole, but the little object had to be a box-it didn’t weigh enough for a block of solid ivory. Samlor put his dagger down on the desk to free his right hand . . .

And read the superscription on the piece of parchment there, a letter barely begun:

“To Master Samlor hi! Sami If you are well. it is good. I also am well.

I enclose w………

The script was Cirdonian, and the final letter trailed off in a sweep of ink across the parchment. Following the curve of that motion, Samlor saw a delicate silver pen on the marble floor a few feet to the side of the desk.

Samlor set down the ivory box, and he very deliberately kept the weapon in his hand. From the look of matters, Setios might have been better off if he’d been holding a blade and not a pen a week or so earlier. Instinctively, the caravan master’s left arm encircled Star, locating the child while he turned and said, “Khamwas. This is important. I think I’ve been doing Setios an injustice, thinking he’d ducked out to avoid me.”