A Flight of Ravens by John Conroe (thriller books to read TXT) 📗

third reason was more practical. I didn’t have an eslling in my direct employ who would be useful for an abduction and question session.  That point was one I intended to remedy immediately, and plans were already underway.

Tipton walked us into the Knife and Needle’s courtyard and Welton was there to take his reins.

“Where’s your brother today?” I asked.

He grinned a wicked grin.  “He’s hauling wood for Mama and then for Aunt Sissa.”

“Isn’t that your job?”

He shrugged.  “Normally, but I had to come here. He doesn’t have a job at the moment,” he said with another cheeky grin.

“Fetch him.  His lack of employment has just changed,” I said.

The boy’s shoulders slumped as he realized his relief from his family chores was over, but his eyes flashed with interest.  “What’s he going to be doing?”

“That’s for me to tell him, O shadow of Shadows,” I said.  He grinned at that.  Our cook, Brin, had called him that from the time he could first toddle about, always following his father, Paddy, everywhere he went.  Then sadness washed away his humor and he looked at the ground.

“It’s really hard, isn’t it?” I asked.  He just nodded, his throat bobbing a little, then something occurred to him.

“For you too?” he asked, maybe surprised.

“I’ve known your father longer than you have, Welton, as well as your Uncle Ash.  Your dad was very important to us and your uncle was my right hand.”

“They’re not coming back, are they?”

“I won’t lie to you… It doesn’t look good.”

His expression went briefly bleak, then turned fierce, a mini-mirror of his father’s war face.  “We’ll kill them all, sir, won’t we?  All the woldlings!”

“That’s pretty much what we do, lad.  Now, see to Tipton, then fetch Brent please.”

“Yes sir,” he said, straightening and looking me in the eye.  Paddy’s sons were two of the best boys I had ever met.  And now I was about to task one of them with a job he was too young for, one that might snip his life cord before it had barely started to unroll.

Hemppe looked up from the keg of beer he was rolling toward the bar as I entered my inn.  He nodded toward my office, then continued his task.  Hemppe is a man of few words; his gestures and expressions say far more than his mouth.

I entered my office and found a rolled-up parchment, sealed with wax that bore a unique mark.  Rather than a signet ring or family crest, the mark was that of a local brewery, the same mark as the one on Hemppe’s keg.  Yesterday’s parchment had the mark of the bakery we used most often.  Tomorrow’s seal would be that of whichever winery we were featuring this week.  Bread, beer, and wine was a phrase the soldiers of the Ranged Reconnaissance Squadron used among themselves.  It was the answer to why we fight for our kingdom.

“For bread, beer, and wine.”

The phrase began hundreds of years ago, according to Squadron legend.  One of the first special soldiers to serve the kingdom had been asked by a pompous member of the king’s high council if he took great pleasure in serving the High Families.  His response had been flippant.  “No, I work for bread, beer, and wine,” was his answer, which completely ruffled the nobleman’s feathers and resulted in disciplinary action, all of which pretty much guaranteed his words would immediately spread throughout the Squadron.

The truth is that we work for the kingdom, nobility be damned.  I’d had that concept thrown in my face a great deal when I first entered the Squadron.  It was rare for any member of the High Families of Montshire to go anywhere near the RRS.  Sons of nobility go into cavalry or heavy infantry, not special warfare.  I might have joined the RRS with excellent skills and toughness, but that didn’t mean the rest of my education wasn’t long and sometimes painful.

Hemppe used the phrase to code each day’s intelligence report.  If the mark had been altered or had an out of order vendor for that day, then I would know it had been opened or swapped out.  It wasn’t a perfect measure by any means, but just one of many ways we all worked to prevent Shadow secrets from falling into anyone else’s hands.

When I unrolled it, the report looked like a summary of alcohol, food, and lodging sales.  Short sentences that told which beer sold best or which rooms had been rented.  It was all code.  I could care less what mix of products Hemppe pushed through the Knife and Needle.  That was his job, and he was good at it.  Bottom lines were mine.  But this simple summary actually gave me the high points of intelligence reports gathered from assets throughout the kingdom and outside of it, collated by my inn manager and agent dispatcher.

A line that mentioned that Coal Diggers stout beer from Pug’s Keep, north of Wenkroy, was currently selling well told me that our asset in that town had been observing an uptick in Sylvanian activity, as that wretched country is well known for the flammable black rock.  Pug’s Keep was in a kind of neutral zone, north of Wenkroy, south of Drodacia, almost directly in between Montshire and Sylvania.  The independent town had survived for centuries by being a crossroads for trade between all four nations while beholden to none of them.  This was the kind of thing we looked for to figure out the Paul’s intentions.

The sentence that indicated that we had a room rental to a Berkette merchant wasn’t real.  It was an indication that a trade delegate from the Republic of Berkette was in Haven, likely to hold discussions with the king and the minister of commerce.

There were other coded mentions of Sylvanian activity in Mandrigo, Berkette, and Wenkroy.  Agents and supposed businessmen from the dark kingdom nosing around.  But it was a line about southeastern Drodacia that caught my eye, and it wasn’t even in code, just an FYI comment under