her chamberpot and put it to its appropriate use. Meantime she explained the
plot she had hatched.
‘But this means you’re claiming to have read the scroll,’ Melilot said slowly as
he tried to digest her proposals. ‘It’s enchanted! How could you?’
‘Not I, but Enas Yorl.’
Melilot’s mouth worked and all his colour drained away. ‘But his palace is
guarded by basilisks!’ he exclaimed at last. ‘You’d have been struck to stone!’
‘It doesn’t quite work like that,’ Jarveena said, pulling on her breeches,
giving silent thanks that she could do so briskly. That dreadful paralysis would
haunt her dreams for years. ‘To settle the argument, though, why don’t you bring
the scroll? I mean, why don’t we go and take another look at it?’
They were in his sanctum a couple of minutes later.
‘It’s perfectly clear,’ Melilot said slowly when he had perused the document
twice. ‘It’s very stilted – formal Rankene – and I don’t know anybody here or in
the conquered cities who would use it for a letter. But it says exactly what you
said it would.’
A tremor of awe made his rolls of fat wobble.
‘You’re satisfied it’s the same scroll? There’s been no substitution?’ Jarveena
pressed.
‘Yes! It’s been all night in a locked chest! Only magic can account for what’s
happened to it!’
‘Then,’ she said with satisfaction, ‘let’s get on with the job.’
Each noon, in the grounds of the Governor’s Palace before the Halls of Justice,
the guard was inspected and rotated. This ceremony was open to the public – to
everybody, in principle, but in practice only to those who could afford to bribe