With a flourish, Prince Achmed produced a letter in the distinctive red envelope-and-seal of the Byzantine Secret Service. “Behold! A careful accounting of your perfidy and deceit. Which you tried to conceal from me.”

Surplus raised his snout disdainfully. “I never saw the thing before this moment. It must have been placed where you found it by the messenger, for motives known only to himself.”

The ambassador flung away the case and shook the letter open with his left hand. “To begin: You obtained your current situations as my secretaries by presenting me with forged letters of commendation from the Sultan of Krakow-a personage and indeed a position which, under later investigation, turned out not to exist.”

“Sir, everybody puffs their resume. ’Tis a venial sin, at worst.”

“You said you were personal favorites of the Council of Magi and thus able to secure passage through Persia without bribery. Later, when this turned out not to be true, you claimed there had been a change in leadership and your patrons were out of political favor. The truth, it turns out, is that erenow you had never been east of Byzantium.”

“A little white lie,” Darger said urbanely. “We have business in Moscow and you were heading in that direction. It was the only way we could join your caravan. True, the Council of Magi did require you to pay them handsomely. But they would have done so in any case. So our deceit cost you nothing.”

The ambassador’s right hand whitened on the hilt of his scimitar. His horse, sensing his tension, pawed the ground uneasily. “Further, it says here, you are both notorious confidence-men and swindlers who have defrauded your way through the entirety of Europe.”

“Swindlers is such a harsh word. Say rather that we live by our wits.”

“In any case,” Surplus said, “save for the Neanderthals, we are all the staff you have left. And the Neander-men, strong though they are and loyal though they have no choice but to be, are hardly to be relied upon in an emergency.”