Chapter 6: The Echo in the Coin
The bread was a small, warm weight in her stomach, a tangible piece of Kaelen's unspoken apology. It made the cold manipulation of the task ahead feel even more vile. Lord Serek was not just a disruptive lord; he was a man being manipulated into a cage, and she was forging the lock.
But now, she had a new tool. The silver coin.
She spent the early hours of the morning working on the letter from the baron's daughter. With each sentence, she clutched the coin, channeling the ghostly memories within. She felt the sailor's fear, the grit of salt on his skin, the desperate hope for a new shore. These foreign emotions fueled her ink, giving the words a passionate, desperate authenticity that a simple forgery could never achieve. The physical exhaustion was profound, a deep muscle weariness, but her mind, her own precious memories, remained her own.
When Kaelen arrived just after dawn, the completed letter was on her desk. He looked as if he hadn't slept, his features drawn, but his gaze was clear and direct.
He read the letter in silence. His brow furrowed. "This is… strong. It feels real."
"It needs to, doesn't it?" Elara said, her voice neutral.
He looked at her, a question in his eyes, but he didn't voice it. Instead, he said, "Vorlan is pleased with our efficiency. He has a new task. A more delicate one."
Elara's heart sank. There was no respite. "What now?"
"It's not a forgery. It's an authentication." He placed a small, leather-bound ledger on her desk. It was old, its cover scarred and stained. "This was recovered from a merchant accused of selling secrets to the Kithrian rebels. He claims it's a simple accounts book. The Spymaster believes it contains coded messages. I need you to find them."
"I'm a forger, not a codebreaker," she said, a flare of defiance rising.
"You understand the flow of ink, the pressure of a hand, the rhythm of writing in a way no one else does," Kaelen replied, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Look for the anomalies. The one letter that doesn't belong. The word that is too carefully written. You see the art in the script. See the lie in it."
He left her with the ledger, the lock turning with a definitive click. The unlocked door had been a fleeting moment of trust, now revoked. They were back to warden and prisoner.
With a sigh, Elara opened the ledger. Columns of numbers, lists of goods—spices, silk, iron ore. It was dry, tedious. For hours, she traced the lines of script, seeing nothing but the neat, efficient hand of a merchant.
Frustrated, she picked up the silver coin, rolling it between her fingers out of habit. As she did, her thumb brushed over a line of text describing a shipment of "Verenian saffron." A jolt, faint but distinct, passed from the coin into her hand.
This time, the memory wasn't the sailor's. It was sharper, more recent. A flash of this very ledger, open on a sunlit desk. A feeling of panic, of a hand quickly turning a page.
She dropped the coin, startled. It wasn't just a battery for her magic; it was a key that could unlock echoes in other objects. It had reacted to the ledger.
Her heart pounding, she picked up the coin again and deliberately held it against the page. She closed her eyes, focusing not on the words, but on the feeling the coin provided. The panic. The secrecy.
When she opened her eyes, the page seemed to shift. The entry for "Verenian saffron" glimmered faintly. The double 'n' in 'Verenian' was shaped differently from all the others in the ledger—the downstroke was a hair too deliberate, the loop a fraction too tight.
It was a trigger. A marker.
Working methodically, coin in hand, she scanned the pages. She found another: "Fine Solian silk." The 'S' was subtly distorted. A third: "Raw iron ore, northern vein." The 'v' in 'vein' had a tiny, unnecessary serif.
She listed the marked words. Verenian. Solian. Northern. Vein. They seemed random. Then she looked at the quantities. 100 crowns worth of saffron. 500 crowns of silk. 1000 crowns of iron.
It was a map. A route. Verenian Pass. Solian Bridge. Northern Vein Mine.
She had found it. The merchant's code, laid bare not by complex ciphers, but by the tiny, terrified inconsistencies of his hand, echoes the coin had allowed her to see.
When Kaelen returned that evening, she showed him. She explained the marked words, the hidden route, a path through the empire's heartland used by rebels. She left out the coin. That was her secret, her power. The one thing Vorlan and his system could not control.
Kaelen listened, his astonishment growing with every word. "This is it," he murmured, staring at her notes with something like awe. "This is the proof Vorlan needed. You've just given him the means to crush a rebel supply line."
The weight of his words settled on her. She hadn't just authenticated a document; she had likely signed a death warrant for the merchant and who knows how many rebels. People fighting, perhaps, the same broken system she hated.
She had been so proud of her cleverness, she hadn't considered the consequences.
"Elara," Kaelen said, his voice low and intense. "This is… exceptional."
"Is it?" she asked, her voice hollow. "How many people will die because of this?"
The admiration in his eyes flickered, replaced by a grim understanding. "The empire's stability requires difficult choices."
"The Spymaster's power, you mean," she corrected softly.
He didn't deny it. He just looked at her, the ledger between them, a testament to her incredible skill and the bloody price of it. The gulf between his duty and her morality had never been wider, and yet, in that shared, grim silence, they had never been more acutely aware of each other.
He had seen her brilliance. And she had seen the cost of it reflected in his troubled eyes. The game had changed again. She was no longer just a forger; she was a weapon of immense power. And they both knew it.