Anya
The scroll is a dead weight in my hands. Master Elian stares at me, his mouth a small ‘o’ of shock. The silence in the archive is heavier than before, thick with the ghost of Alexandre’s presence.
“Well,” Master Elian finally says, adjusting his spectacles. “The Grand Duke. Here. Unprecedented.”
“He needed a manuscript,” I say, my voice a carefully pitched whisper.
“He needed a miracle, from the sound of it,” the old man mutters, shuffling back to his desk. “And you found one. In a pile of sea charts.” He shakes his head. “Deliver that to his study at once. And do not stumble this time.”
I nod, clutching the scroll. I walk the corridors, my steps silent. I am invisible again. To the guards I pass, to the courtiers gossiping near a window, I am just a servant on an errand. They have no idea I hold a key to the survival of the Northern Army. They have no idea I just placed myself on the Grand Duke’s private map.
Alexandre’s study is empty. I place the scroll in the center of his massive oak desk, right next to a detailed map of the northern border, weighed down with polished stones. A dangerous game, marked out in ink. My game now, too.
The next few weeks are a blur of dust and ink. I am a model assistant. Quiet, efficient, obedient. I learn the labyrinth of the archives, not just the shelf locations, but the palace’s circulatory system. I learn which ledgers are requested by the Royal Bursar every morning, which land deeds are reviewed by the Crown Prince’s advisors in the afternoon.
It is in a stack of quartermaster’s ledgers that I find it.
“Anya,” Master Elian says one morning, his voice raspy. “Minister Aris has lodged another complaint about grain shipments to the Northern Command. He claims the numbers do not add up. A fool’s errand, but humor him. Cross-reference these manifests with the bursar’s disbursement logs.”
Minister Aris. A good man. Honest. In my first life, Valerius had him ruined over a trumped-up charge of embezzlement. It was his removal that gave Valerius’s ally, Baron Vane, control of the Imperial Treasury.
My blood runs cold. It is starting.
I lay the documents out on a side table. The grain manifests, signed by a supply captain at the northern garrison. The disbursement logs, sealed by the Royal Bursar here in the capital. I trace the columns of numbers with my finger. Bushels of wheat. Sacks of barley. Casks of salted meat. Everything appears to match.
But a memory flickers behind my eyes. A conversation I overheard as Empress. Livia, laughing. “Valerius is so clever,” she’d said to a friend. “Who would ever think to check the weight conversions? A northern bushel is heavier than a capital bushel. It is the perfect little lie.”
The perfect little lie. They are not shipping the full amount of grain. They are shipping less, but logging it with the northern weight measurement, making the numbers appear correct on paper. The difference, paid for by the treasury, goes straight into Baron Vane’s pockets. And when the shortfall is discovered, the blame will fall on Minister Aris, who approves the payments.
My hands tremble slightly. I press them flat on the table. Here it is. My first opportunity. A way to wound them, to save a good man, and to do it without anyone ever knowing my name.
I need a messenger who cannot be questioned. An anonymous letter. And I need a recipient who cannot be bought. Captain Gregor of the Royal Guard.
That night, I do not sleep. In the darkness of my tiny servant’s cell, I prepare my weapon. I burn the edge of a small twig from the garden until it is a fine charcoal point. For ink, I mix soot from the laundry fires with a few drops of water in a clamshell I found. For paper, a rough, untraceable scrap used to wrap soap.
I disguise my handwriting, forming cramped, angular letters unlike my own elegant script. The message must be short. A clue, not a confession.
*To Captain Gregor,* I write.
*Ask the Royal Bursar for the weight conversion tables between a capital bushel and a northern bushel. Then re-weigh the next grain shipment for the Northern Command before it leaves the city gates. Minister Aris is an honest man.*
That is all. It is enough.
The next day, my heart is a frantic bird in my chest. I know Captain Gregor’s daily security briefing passes through the archives for a final seal before being delivered to him at the midday bell. It is my job to apply the wax and stamp.
I watch the clock. I watch Master Elian doze at his desk. When the courier brings the leather-bound folder, my hands are slick with sweat.
“I will see to it, Master Elian,” I say, my voice steady.
He waves a dismissive hand. I take the folder to the sealing station. My hands move quickly. I melt the wax. As it drips, I slip my tiny, folded note inside the folder, tucking it between the second and third pages. I press the archivist’s seal into the hot wax. Done.
The courier returns and takes the folder. It is gone. My message is a poison arrow, flying silently toward its target. Now, I can only wait.
Two days pass. The silence from the court is a screaming tension in my mind. Did he find it? Did he dismiss it as a prank? Was I discovered?
On the third day, two nobles enter the archives. Lord Titus and Lord Martel. They are minor functionaries, professional gossips. They think the archives are empty, save for a deaf old man and a dim-witted girl.
“Can you believe it?” Lord Titus says, his voice a conspiratorial hiss. “They arrested Baron Vane’s chief steward this morning.”
Lord Martel lowers his voice. “I heard Captain Gregor himself led the raid. They stopped a grain shipment at the North Gate. Weighed it right there on the road. Came up short. Drastically short.”
My breath catches in my throat. I keep my back to them, pretending to organize scrolls.
“And the steward confessed everything,” Titus continues. “Named the Baron and the whole scheme. They say Minister Aris is going to be publicly exonerated by the Emperor himself.”
“The Crown Prince must be furious,” Martel whispers. “Baron Vane is his man. This is a direct blow. Who could have possibly tipped Gregor off?”
“No one knows. They say he acted on an ‘anonymous tip’. Can you imagine the chaos in the Crown Prince’s circle right now? They are tearing their own offices apart, searching for a traitor.”
I allow myself the smallest smile, a secret I share with the dusty shelves. It is a thrilling, terrifying sensation. Like holding lightning in a bottle. They are bleeding. They are confused. And they are hunting for a ghost.
I run a cloth over a leather-bound history of the Empire. In my first life, I was its subject. Now, I am its author, writing new chapters in invisible ink.
They lit a fire to kill an Empress. They have no idea they just gave a laundry maid a box of matches.
