have any call to be carrying gold with him, nor Fynner.’
He stood over the coin, looking down at it, but making no effort to pick it up. The coin was large, but not one he recognised, certainly not Circle City currency. While each quarter had its own, none of the gold coins used there were even similar. After a moment he crouched to pick the coin up, hissing at the clicks in his knees as he did so.
The coin was a thin disc, half the width of his palm, flattened at the rim to produce a very dull edge. There was nothing on it to indicate its origin; it wasn’t really a coin at all since there was no sign of currency stamped on it. He carried it back around to the table and set it down, peering closely at it.
‘So what are you then?’ he asked.
Now he could see that symbols had been badly engraved onto the surface, around a crude cross. Something about that made him think of Elven core runes, but his education on such matters was limited. The cross was not composed of single lines, but half a dozen or so roughly parallel grooves.
He picked up the coin and was about to turn it over when he felt a tingle in his fingertips. On a whim he placed it upright on its edge and turned it around instead of flipping it over. The other side also had a strange script engraved on the surface, so lightly it looked almost like scratches, but the main symbol was a circle of several grooves around the flattened edge. The coin - disc - was old, and the gold had more than a few minor dents and scratches, but still Cardinal Eleil could see a distorted reflection within the polished circle. He turned it again, then flicked it with his fingernail to set it spinning on its edge.
As he watched the runes and faint reflection merge, he thought he heard a tiny sound from somewhere behind, the softest of whispers. He jerked around, but there was no one there. Doors set with two panes of glass led out onto a balcony, but he could see no one though the panes and the bolts top and bottom, out of reach of anyone breaking the small windows, remained firmly closed.
‘Foolishness,’ he muttered, and returned to the coin, which was lying flat on the tabletop, cross side up. Again he put it on its edge and set it spinning to watch the two sides merge. It reminded him of a toy he’d once had as a child, a piece of painted wood on strings which, when turned quickly, merged the image of a bird on one side with the cage on the other.
A susurrus sigh came from his right and the cardinal half-jumped out of his seat. He slapped a palm down onto the coin as he turned to where he’d heard the sound. There was no one there; nothing was disturbed, and the only piece of furniture that could possible have hidden someone, a padded recliner he often took an afternoon nap on, was at such an angle that it would have been impossible.
He resisted the urge to ask, ‘Who’s there?’ and rose instead. He went to the bureau against the wall behind him. With one eye on the far side of the room he pressed a catch just inside the footwell and opened one of the drawers, reaching inside to pull a thin dagger from its hiding place.
With that in his hand he advanced to the other end of the room. The light was starting to fade and Cardinal Eleil realised the room was gloomier than he’d realised while eating. This end of his study had only one small window, above head-height. Set into the wall was an elegant fireplace with a tallboy on either side and a gilt-framed mirror above.
He glanced back at the coin, on the table where he’d left it. Its warm yellow colour looked markedly out of place in the dimly lit room. A slight scratching sound came from the wall by the door and he whipped around - to see nothing there at all ... but his heart gave a lurch when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something reflected in the mirror. He faced the wood-panelled wall, but still he saw nothing unusual there at all, and when he looked back at the mirror it was empty.