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Once I recovered, something began bugging me. After a minute, I figured it out - "You seemed awfully eager today."

Renna took it as a comment, not an implied question, and let it stand.

Before I could figure out what to add, Mezo called out. Renna looked to me as if he was dragging us apart, and she began to get up. Mezo called again - more of a scream - and Renna adopted a more businesslike demeanor and hurried off. I took a second to grab the basket and several more seconds to make sure my sari wasn't going to revert to a line of cloth, and followed.

Renna was already taking down an urgent message - <... for Fazo embassy. Encrypted - declare key...>

There was a connection request coming from Tengo, and I took it right there in the back. <You have Getta line 3. >

<Hi Famir. We have a direct message for your foreign office. > I recognized her rhythm - this was almost certainly Venath.

<Not through embassy?>

<Yes. Ready?> - <Yes> - <To Getta Foreign Office. From Weld Expeditionary Force Second Regiment Command, per request of Fazo Department of State in response to query. Security: none - release to foreign power. Subject: Second Regiment Details. End Header. Ready?>

<Suggest consistency checks on message body.>

<Yes. Ready?> - <Yes.> - <Second regiment activated in compliance with defense treaty with Weld day 190. Completed deployment to Riurres by direction of Weld day 198. Report from second regiment indicating gas attack, at 4,10:40. Contact lost with second regiment, at 4,10:65. End. Generating checks>

I generated the checks based on the message as she did, and she read them out a few moments after I finished. <Checks match. Venath, where is Riurres?>

<Weld. >

<Periten attacking?>

<Looks like.>

I winced. What was wrong with them, launching a surprise attack the moment there was a chance? I closed the connection, picked up the message, and took it up front. Mezo was taking a different message, and we didn't have any runners on call at this time of night, so I decided to walk it over myself - it was only a few blocks. Within a few minutes, I arrived. Delivering messages myself really took me back to my early days, twelve years ago, as a runner. Today, it wasn't so much running as a brisk shuffle.

The lights were on, and as I walked up the steps, a guard stepped forward. "Miss, I'm afraid this is not a good time."

"I am carrying a message for the foreign office from the Fazo military."

The guard stepped into the light, revealing a long foxy muzzle and some serious claws, which he clacked. He said, "Now I'm afraid I do know all of the official couriers in the city, and you are not one of them."

I pursed my lips. "I happen not to be in my usual body at the moment, but I am a registered courier. Can you just take the message... well, no, you can't, not without verifying the message origin. Shoot."

"Not in your usual body?" The guard laughed. "Seriously?"

"Yes. I saw a flood of messages, and thought it would be best to get to work immediately rather than taking the time to revert to my regular form."

The door opened and a naga man I dimly recognized stuck his head out. "Let her in."

The guard stepped aside, and I slipped in. The naga squinted at me. "Name?"

There was no way around it. "Famir."

The naga wrote that down; I tried to offer him the message, but he declined it, instead gesturing for me to wait in a room that, by the standards of Getta, was ornately appointed. It had two sofas bracketing a large globe, and teak paneling with gilding in spots, and mini-palm trees in the corners; four large globes hanging just above the palms gave a diffuse, shadowless light. Curious, I searched for Riurres on the globe, and soon found it. It wasn't a city or even a town, but a delta just north of Geltiassen. Renna and I been talked out of boating there a few weeks before setting out for home.

"You haven't been female long, have you?"

I turned and found someone I did recognize, a human-form male with a very sharp face, and wearing pants (as he always had - which suggested but did not prove that he was not a naga) - though I recognized him, I did not recall his name at that time (it was Farsel). He'd been fairly low-ranked when I was a courier, but based on the uniform, I could see he'd risen. I checked that my boobs weren't hanging out, and answered, "Around three hours."

"That's supposed to go with a blouse."

"So I heard. If it hadn't been urgent, I would" - he interrupted me. "Famir, you said? Fascinating that you should come up again so soon."

"Excuse me?"

As if we had nothing more important to do than make light conversation, he summoned the toy. His was red and blocky. "So. How far in are you?"

"I haven't started." I showed mine, and dismissed it.

"Really? It's fascinating. For instance, I'm on layer 7. I can go back to earlier layers..." it repopped into the form of mine. "... but if I call it fresh, it'll show layer 7 first."

"How many layers are there?"

"Eleven have been opened. They get harder and harder. If you go to the temple, there's a list of whoever first opened each layer. The priest of some village in Vaikondas decided to take a couple minutes to demonstrate the toy during the service and got the first two himself, for instance."

"All that is really interesting, but can I deliver my message?"

"How would you best establish your identity? Family members... who haven't been out of the country for most of the last year?"

He knows a noticeable amount about me. Why would he? "My parents are at sea. My sister and in-laws are in different cities. Psychic projection seems best."

"Fakeable."

I raised an eyebrow (eye-ridge, I guess - no hair), incredulous. I had never heard of psychic projections being faked. "Then, don't trust me. Just send a courier down to the telegraphy office, ask to verify the checks on the message, which are in the log. If you don't trust them or don't trust the checks, ask to call the office in Tengo. If you get there soon, they'll still have it on hand. Ask a random simple question about the original message."

Now it was his turn to raise an eyebrow. "A random question?"

"Yes. Then I couldn't have carefully created a fake message that would produce the same cyclic check, but you won't need to take the whole message down again, risking it being exposed. Now, this was an unencrypted message, so you are really also trusting the telegraphy office in Tengo."

The door opened and a military officer swept in, his orange fur trimmed bristle short. "What's the hold-up?"

Farsel gestured to me. "Can't establish that this is actually a courier."

The officer looked me over, and back at him. "I grant, this is an unlikely courier, but it's a fantastically unlikely spy. It doesn't bespeak exceptional professionalism on the part of the telegraphy office...

I repeated, "I happened to visit the office off hours, and there were more calls than telegraphers. I took the message. My attire is not representative of normal operations."

The officer said, rolling his eyes at Farsel, "I'll 'provisionally accept' you are who you say you are." He proferred his hand; I handed the message over. He read it, murmuring key words. "Second regiment... Riurres... Gas attack..." he handed it over to Farsel.

"Gas..." I repeated, trailing my finger over the globe, near Riurres. Something was tickling my mind.

Farsel, scanning it himself, added, "This doesn't look good. Will you have to mobilize?"

"Absolutely! Not only are they belligerent, but they're using poison gas."

That was it. Not 'gas attack', but 'poison gas'. I said, simply, almost as if to no one: "Or it was the marsh gases."

They stopped, and looked at me intently, silently.

I halted, turning on one foot, my finger pointing to Riurres, and elaborated. "That area is marshy. Sometimes it... burps. We were talked out of visiting there about forty days ago, because it hadn't had an eruption in a while. It was due."

Farsel and the officer regarded me at an angle, then looked down at the message together. Farsel looked up to the officer, and the officer looked up to me. He turned back to Farsel and said, "I think we have a few more questions to ask them, before Edii goes off and makes any rousing speeches. You're right after all. This does smell like a con."

Farsel nodded. "We need time." The officer stepped out. To me, Farsel briskly added, "Thank you, and why don't you get back to the office? You may have a long night." He approached me again, and bowed to introduce himself. "Farsel."

I reflexively bowed in return, and the sari fell off my right breast. I looked down at it, then up to him. He did not acknowledge the mishap, pivoted on one foot, and walked away.

I pulled the top of my sari back together, spreading it a bit wider for added security.

As I returned to the telegraphy office, I got the odd feeling that someone was following me. The notion of cloak-and-dagger work passed through my head, but I dismissed it, reasoning that the time to get me would be when I was carrying a message. Of course, they didn't know I wasn't carrying one to the office. Crap.

The person behind me sped up, and I realized I could not outrun, so I turned to face him.

I had mostly expected it to be nothing - someone in a hurry, say; I really hadn't been expecting a little old ferret lady who was indeed clearly pursuing me. She came right up to me and said, "Shame on you!"

"What?"

"Supporting a murderess like that!"

I blinked. "Auntie, I'm very sorry, but you completely lost me. What murderess?"

"Those are guilty hands!"

I looked down at the hands. They didn't look particularly guilty. "What?" She was a bit scary - though much less scary than being assaulted by a spy from an unknown foreign power, to be sure.

She sighed and put her hands on her hips. "You seriously don't know, do you? Have you been under a rock?"

"Weld, actually."

She slowly nodded. "Well, take it from me. You shoulda looked before you bought that body. The money went to a terrible poisoner."

"Is that really how it works? But anyway... I'm just renting for two days."

The woman shook her finger at me. "Now you know. I'll be looking out, and I'm not the only one."

Great. Another thing to worry about.