"Margrave," Kheva said almost apologetically, "my mother's been teaching me the secret language. I know what you're saying."
The man Silk called Javelin stopped moving his fingers with a rueful expression. "Caught by my own cleverness, I see," he said. He looked speculatively at Errand.
"This is Errand, the boy Polgara and Durnik are raising," Silk told him.
"Ah," Javelin said, "the bearer of the Orb."
"Kheva and I can wait outside if you want to speak privately." Errand offered.
Javelin thought about that. "That probably won't be necessary," he decided. "I think we can trust you both to be discreet. Sit down, gentlemen." He pointed at the other three chairs.
"I'm sort of retired, Javelin," Silk told him. "I've got enough other things to keep me busy just now."
"I wasn't really going to ask you to get personally involved," Javelin replied. " All I really want is for you to find room for a couple of new employees in one of your enterprises."
Silk gave him a curious look.
"You're shipping goods out of Gar og Nadrak along the Northern Caravan Route," Javelin continued. "There are several villages near the border where the citizens are highly suspicious of strangers with no valid reason for passing through."
"And you want to use my caravans to give your men an excuse for being in those villages," Silk concluded.
Javelin shrugged. "It's not an uncommon practice."
"What's going on in eastern Drasnia that you're so interested in?"
"The same thing that's always going on in the outlying districts."
"The Bear-cult?" Silk asked incredulously. "You're going to waste time on them?"
"They've been behaving peculiarly lately. I want to find out why."
Silk looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
"Just call it idle curiosity if you like."
The look Silk gave him then was very hard. "Oh, no. You're not going to catch me that easily, my friend."
"Aren't you the least bit curious?"
"No. As a matter of fact, I'm not. No amount of clever trickery is going to lure me into neglecting my own affairs to go off on another one of your fishing expeditions. I'm too busy, Javelin." His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "Why don't you send Hunter?"
"Hunter's busy someplace else, Silk, and stop trying to find out who Hunter is."
"It was worth a try. Actually I'm not interested at all, not in the least." He sat back in his chair with his arms adamantly crossed. His long pointed nose, however, was twitching. "What do you mean by 'behaving peculiarly?"' he asked after a moment.
"I thought you weren't interested."
"I'm not," Silk repeated hastily. "I most definitely am not." His nose, however, was twitching even more violently. Angrily he got to his feet. "Give me the names of the men you want me to hire," he said abruptly. "I'll see what I can do."
"Of course, Prince Kheldar," Javelin said blandly. "I appreciate your sense of loyalty to your old service."
Errand remembered something that Silk had said in the large outer room. "Silk says that information about almost everything is brought to this building," he said to Javelin.
"That might be an exaggeration, but we try."
"Then perhaps you might have heard something about Zandramas."
Javelin looked at him blankly.
"It's something that Belgarion and I heard about," Errand explained. "And Belgarath is curious about it, too. I thought you might have heard about it."
"I can't say that I have," Javelin admitted. "Of course we're a long way from Darshiva."
"What's Darshiva?" Errand asked.
"It's one of the principalities of the old Melcene Empire in eastern Mallorea. Zandramas is a Darshivan name. Didn't you know that?"
"No. We didn't."
There was a light tap on the door.
"Yes?" Javelin answered.
The door opened, and a young lady of perhaps nineteen or twenty came in. Her hair was the color of honey, her eyes were a warm, golden brown, and she wore a plain-looking gray dress. Her expression was serious, but there was just the hint of a dimple in each of her cheeks. "Uncle," she said, and her voice had a kind of vibrancy about it that made it almost irresistibly compelling.
Javelin's hard, angular face softened noticeably. "Yes, Liselle?" he said.
"Is this little Liselle?" Silk exclaimed.
"Not quite so little any more," Javelin said.
"The last time I saw her she was still in braids."
"She combed out the braids a few years ago," Javelin said drily, "and look what was hiding under them."
"I am looking," Silk said admiringly.
"The reports you wanted, uncle," the girl said, laying a sheaf of parchment on the table. Then she turned to Kheva and curtsied to him with incredible grace. "Your Highness," she greeted him.
"Margravine Liselle," the little prince replied with a polite bow.
"And Prince Kheldar," the girl said then.
"We weren't at all so formal when you were a child," Silk protested.
"But then, I'm not a child any more, your Highness."
Silk looked over at Javelin. "When she was a little girl, she used to pull my nose."
"But it's such a long, interesting nose," Liselle said. And then she smiled, and the dimples suddenly sprang to life.
"Liselle is helping out here," Javelin said. "She'll be entering the academy in a few months."
"You're going to be a spy?" Silk asked her incredulously.
"It's the family business, Prince Kheldar. My father and mother were both spies. My uncle here is a spy. All of my friends are spies. How could I possibly be anything else?"
Silk looked a trifle off-balance. "It just doesn't seem appropriate, for some reason."
"That probably means that I'll be quite successful, doesn't it? You look like a spy, Prince Kheldar. I don't, so I won't have nearly as many problems as you've had."
Though the girl's answers were clever, even pert, Errand could see something in her warm, brown eyes that Silk probably could not. Despite the fact that the Margravine Liselle was obviously a grown woman, Silk just as obviously still thought of her as a little girl -one who had pulled his nose.
The look she gave him, however, was not the look of a little girl, and Errand realized that she had been waiting for a number of years for the opportunity to meet Silk on adult terms. Errand covered his mouth with his hand to hide a smile. The wily Prince Kheldar had some very interesting times ahead of him.