Silver Ravens

by Jane Fletcher

  “Long-term lovers? I know the fay aren’t into formal marriage, but was there anyone who was important to her? “

  “None who stand out. Most of her lovers ended up dead or in a dungeon.”

  Which was less than promising. “She probably didn’t immortalise their names in her code then.”

  “No, probably not.”

  “You don’t know of anyone she was close to?”

  “No. She made more enemies than friends.”

  “She sounds like bad news all round.”

  “She did what had to be done. There was a crisis and the Council of Elders were going nowhere fast. Morgaine had been on the council, but lost patience with the bickering and time-wasting. She formed the Raven Warriors and took charge.”

  “She used human mercenaries to seize power.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  What other way was there? “You think she was justified?”

  Tamsin shrugged. “Things worked out okay. Annwyn’s been more stable, and she stopped fay buggering around with Earth. There used to be hundreds of portals between the worlds. The fay would visit and stir up a shit-storm, just for fun. The old legends—Odin, Zeus, Horus, and the rest—that was fay pretending to be gods. Queen Morgaine put a stop to it. She closed down most portals, and put guards on the rest. She protected Earth, and let us go our own way.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t just that she didn’t want other fay raising their own human armies against her?”

  Tamsin hesitated, a denial clearly on her lips, but then she sighed. “Perhaps. She certainly wasn’t bothered by humans being enthralled. Like I told you, it happened to me when I arrived. I spent my first five years here as a thrall. Luckily, I was given to Rianna, who was a princess then.” Her expression softened. “She didn’t treat me the way other fay would have. She’d have freed me completely if she could, but King Orfran, her father, forbade it.”

  “Why? The Iron Ravens were here weren’t they? Or were they thralls back then?”

  “No. Thralls are hopeless at fighting. They need to be told when to duck.”

  “So what was special about you?”

  “Who knows? But it wasn’t just King Orfran. After he died, Bronwen took over, and she had something against me too. She…” Tamsin’s face shifted through several expressions, most of them awkward and strained. “Anyway, Bronwen was going to be a disaster. Queen Rianna didn’t want to fight her sister, but had no choice. She freed her humans, and we helped her overthrow Bronwen.”

  “What happened to Bronwen?”

  “She died in the fighting. It wasn’t what Queen Rianna wanted, but Bronwen wouldn’t surrender when given the chance.”

  So, Rianna usurped her sister’s throne and killed her. Why am I not surprised? And Tamsin saw nothing wrong in it. There’s something I’m missing. However, time was passing.

  “I need to get back to the keep.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  At the gate to the middle bailey, Lori paused and looked back. The Silver Ravens were at their target practice. For the briefest moment, she played with the idea of joining them. But no. She had been kidnapped and was effectively a prisoner. She must not lose sight of the true situation—especially when Rianna was added to the equation. The only sensible goal was to get away, as quickly as possible. Anything else was madness.

  Chapter Ten

  The temperature was climbing, and Annwyn was yet to discover air-conditioning. Lori opened the windows as wide as they would go and returned to her seat. Pages of notes littered the table. She stared at them glumly. Talking to Tamsin had suggested some keys to try out, but so far permutations on “close the portals” and “overthrow the council” had been no more successful than “High Queen Morgaine.” Was she on the wrong track?

  The sound of angry voices came in through the open doorway, breaking her concentration.

  “I saw you.”

  “Saw me do what?”

  “You dealt the last card off the bottom of the pack.”

  “You dare accuse me of cheating!”

  “You dare deny it! Do you think I’m blind, or stupid?”

  “I’ve never thought you blind, but as for the other…” The words were followed by the sharp grating of chair legs.

  A third bored voice joined in. “Brothers, please. Let us keep some sense of decorum.”

  “Didn’t you see him cheating?”

  “Frankly, no. You’re both playing so drearily I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.”

  Lori went to investigate. On a balcony below, two fay men were seated at a table, while a third stood, fists on hips. Two of the huge, red-eyed dogs—hellhounds—lay panting in a patch of shade. The balcony was smaller and farther away than the one where Rianna and Tamsin had been, but close enough to see and hear easily.

  “Come. Sit down.”

  “I’m not laying another card with that cheat.”

  “I’ve told you—” The fay shoved back his chair, just as a boggart arrived, carrying a tray of drinks.

  The unfortunate boggart was knocked sideways and the tray slipped from its hands. The bottle shattered on the paving, splattering wine up the legs of the standing man. The boggart dropped to its knees, hastily brushing the wreckage back onto the tray, using its hand as a scoop.

  Would this put an end to the argument, or would they carry on once the boggart had finished cleaning up? Lori did not want to close the door, but she could not work through the disruption. The trouble was, it was so hard to judge fays’ intentions from their expressions. They always looked bored and offended.

  Movement at the other end of the balcony caught her eye. The two huge dogs had risen to their feet. They shook themselves off, then fixed their gaze on the kneeling boggart. The hellhounds’ red eyes glowed as they advanced, teeth bared. The boggart squealed and scrambled away, until it was pressed against the balustrade.

  Lori waited for the command to call the dogs back. It never came. The fay watched impassively, making no attempt to intervene. One dog lunged forward, fastening onto the boggart’s shoulder, and pulling it to the ground. The other caught a flailing leg. The boggart’s squeals changed to shrill, agonised howls.

  Lori wanted to look away, but her eyes would not obey her. Splatters of green blood mingled with the red wine. The hellhounds shook the body between them, like puppies playing with a rag toy. The boggart’s efforts weakened, as did its screams. One dog clamped its jaws on the boggart’s throat, and at last all sound and movement stopped, although the hellhounds continued to worry at its body. Blood formed rivulets on the tiles.

  One of the seated fay finally raised his voice. “Leave it. You’re just making a mess.” One dog obeyed immediately. The other had a final sniff. “No. Don’t eat it. You’ll get your dinner later.” The fay turned to his standing companion. “There. Has that made you feel better?”

  “No.” The angry fay stormed off. The door slammed with a crash.

  They had not been watching powerlessly. One fay had been controlling the dogs, venting his anger on a defenceless victim. They were callous, evil bastards. Lori’s hands formed fists so tight they hurt. Her stomach threatened to empty its contents. But there was nothing she could have done to help the boggart, and nothing she could do now to avenge it.

  The two remaining fay stayed seated. “What’s that stench? Did it shit itself?”

  “Probably. Shall we go?”

  “Why not?”

  As they left the balcony, Lori caught one last exchange. “I wasn’t cheating, you know.”

  “Really? I’d have sworn I saw you slipping cards off the bottom. I’d said nothing in the hope you’d get the wretched game over with quickly.”

  The hellhounds trotted after them, leaving the body on the balcony, looking like a pile of paint soaked rags. Had it been an animal, its death would have been an act of wanton cruelty. But the boggart had been more than that. It could speak and think. It had been murdered, and the fay were unconcer
ned. Would they have any qualms over treating humans the same way? Lori doubted it.

  She stumbled back to the study and slumped on her stool. Had Tamsin been present to witness the killing, what would she have thought? Would she have begun questioning her loyalty to the queen? But Tamsin was not there. Not there to witness the casual brutality, not there to see Gaius’s pathetic condition, not there with access to information the queen clearly did not want known. Were Tamsin and the Silver Ravens sheltered from scenes like the one she had just watched? Or could fay control human minds, even when they wore iron torcs?

  Either way, Lori could reach one alarming conclusion. The queen was not concerned at her observing what went on in the keep. The best interpretation was that she would be leaving the instant the code was broken, so what she knew did not matter. The worst did not bear thinking about.

  Lori buried her face in her hands. She had to get away.

  * * *

  Sleep was impossible. Lori rolled onto her back and stared into the darkness. Images of the boggart’s death would not fade. Even if she did sleep, she was sure to have nightmares. She slipped out of bed and pulled a blanket around her shoulders, mainly for the comfort value. The heat of the day was lingering, well after the sun had gone down.

  The fire making material beside the hearth included a box of normal, Earth style matches. After fumbling around in the dark, Lori lit a candle then sat at the table, watching the flame waver in the draft whispering through the window shutters. Candlelight created shifting patterns on the textured lid of her laptop. Before leaving Annwyn she should check that Widget’s new password worked, but this could wait until she had a reason to turn the laptop on.

  Creating a program to analyse the scroll would be simple enough. The mathematics was trivial. As long as she had eight hours of battery life to write, test, and debug the code, Lori would have backed herself to do it. If Morgaine had used a Playfair cipher, the laptop could spit out the key in seconds. The “if” part was the problem. Supposing she flattened the battery, only to discover her Playfair assumption was wrong. Supposing she ran into a more desperate need for the laptop.

  Rianna should have sent Widget to Earth with the scroll. He had hacked her password, so he clearly had serious computing resources at his disposal. He could have decoded the text in far less time, taking far less effort than needed to set the puzzles in Zettabyte. Even if Rianna would not let the scroll leave Caersiddi, he could have brought a computer and power supply from Earth and set up in the study.

  Why not? One possibility was that Rianna would not allow complex Earth technology into her keep. The other, more worrying option, was that even though Rianna could not read the scroll, she had reason to think it contained information she dared not let any Silver Raven discover. The bottom line for Lori being that the queen had a need of Widget’s continued services, but not hers.

  Lori did not want to find out what would happen if she was unable to break the code. But would it be any worse than what would happen if she succeeded? When the decoding was finished, would Rianna really allow her to leave Annwyn?

  Lori wandered back to her bed and sat hugging her knees. Was there any chance she was being unfair? Would the queen have protected the boggart that day, had she been present? Gaius was enthralled, but he might deserve it. He might have been a violent criminal. His current condition certainly counted as unusual punishment, but was it any crueller than whatever other options the Annwyn legal system employed? Except, if there was something approaching a good reason for his condition, why was his existence kept hidden from Tamsin?

  Tamsin. Lori closed her eyes, trying to block out the memory from the bathhouse. That woman is just too damned hot. Lori did not need Adam to tell her that acting on the attraction would turn out badly—not as if she had ever paid attention to his advice about women, otherwise she would never have got involved with Jess. He had been bang on the mark about her. Although, one of his main complaints about her ex-girlfriends was accusing them of being dull and insipid—two adjectives that did not apply to Tamsin.

  Lori groaned. She was in danger of falling, and trying to pretend otherwise was pointless. Admit it. Tamsin had her gooey inside, and gooey in the head as well. And, in this spirit of honest self-assessment, was there any chance her attitude towards Rianna was affected by jealousy? Tamsin had lived in Annwyn for years and was far more knowledgeable about everything that had gone on there. If Tamsin trusted Rianna unreservedly, might she be right? Did Rianna deserve the benefit of the doubt?

  No.

  Lori knew deep in her gut. Rianna was dangerous, deceitful, and totally self-centred. And, from what she had seen that day, all fay were exactly the same. So what did this imply about any code Morgaine might have invented? Like the card cheat on the balcony, would she overestimate her own sleight of hand abilities and underestimate her opponents? Would she react rather than plan ahead? Would boredom get the better of her? The chances were that the code was very straightforward.

  Lori lay back down. Over-thinking the problem was a mistake. The laptop was not necessary and was more likely to complicate the task than help it. When she broke the code, Lori was sure the solution would turn out to be simple, verging on the blindingly obvious.

  * * *

  Two days later, the blindingly obvious solution still eluded her. Lori put down the quill and cupped her chin in her hand. The afternoon sunlight turned floating dust motes into sparkling columns. Little in the way of breeze entered through the open balcony door to stir the hot air. Hair stuck to sweat on the nape of Lori’s neck and her forehead. This was a day to be on the beach, not stuck inside.

  At the other side of the table, Gaius was doing his normal impersonation of a tailor’s manikin. What was his story? When and where had he come from? And was it worth the effort of wheedling the information out of him? His name was Roman. Had he really been in Annwyn while two thousand years passed on Earth?

  It was a worrying reminder that time for her friends and family was rushing by. Lori pulled over a sheet of paper and jotted down notes to make sure of the calendar count—six days minus a few hours, plus a bit for the time in the Halfway House. She frowned. How accurate was the thirty to one time-flow ratio? A month passing in a day sounded a touch contrived.

  Widget probably had the exact figure. She could ask him when they next met. Except trying to work out the date on Earth was pointless. She was stuck in Annwyn until she broke the code. Wasting time was the last thing she should be doing. Furthermore, she had placed the sheet on top of the scroll and risked leaving dents in it. Rianna would definitely not be pleased at the slightest damage.

  Lori took the scroll to the open doorway. Faint imprints showed when the scroll was held obliquely in the shaft of sunlight, but the marks did not match what she had just written. Her notepaper was too thick and the quill was too brittle to press hard enough. Yet somebody had left an impression, though it did not look like writing. What had this unknown person been doing, and had it played any part in decoding the scroll? She was due a lucky break.

  In detective shows, shading with a pencil held sideways made imprints crystal clear, but whether it worked in real life was immaterial. Not only would it be awkward to explain defacing the scroll, but she did not have a pencil. An electrostatic detector would do no damage, but she did not have one of them either, and there was, of course, no electric socket to plug it into.

  Lori turned the scroll around, tilting it in the hope of revealing more detail. Somebody had drawn a grid, several rows deep and two dozen columns wide. The regular lines would have required the use of a straight edge, and possibly explained the pressure applied. Each cell would have been big enough to take a single letter.

  The sight pinged a memory from way back in her teens. What was the name? Vini-something? Vinegar? No, Vigenère. Why had she not thought of it before? A method of encryption created with a rotating cycle of Caesar ciphers, working off a single word key. Simple enough to do with pen and paper. Complex enou
gh to be a bugger to crack. Morgaine’s biggest issue would have been doing the arithmetic using the fay counting system. Roman numerals were intuitive by comparison.

  Why had she not thought of Vigenère before? Admittedly, the last time she had played around with it she had been thirteen, but this was still no excuse for becoming fixated on Playfair. Lori could have slapped herself—blame Dorothy L. Sayers, and reading Have His Carcase over the previous Easter weekend.

  On a fresh sheet of paper, Lori marked out her own grid. Fortunately, there was no reason not to use Arabic numerals and base ten. She simply needed the key, and the first word to try was obvious—blindingly obvious. The only thing Morgaine cared about was herself. What else would she use other than her own name?

  Before Lori had worked through the cycle the first time round, she knew the code was cracked. “Tal ollan.” She spoke the fay words aloud. To join the.

  Gaius stood. “You have discovered how to decode the scroll.”

  “Yes. Morgaine used her own name as—”

  “Queen Rianna must be informed at once.”

  “I’d like to be—”

  She was alone. Gaius had never moved so quickly.

  By the time the door opened again, Lori had got no further then the third line, and was still on how to set everything up, rather than what the spell did, or why it was so important. The only clue lay in the title, To join the worlds in harmony, which did not sound like anything that would interest Rianna. The current line was more in keeping, “Take blood from—”

  “Gaius tells me you have succeeded in your task.”

  Lori stood and bowed her head. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Rianna stalked to her side. “You’ve been reading the scroll.” It was an accusation.

  “Ah…” Too late, Lori remembered the instruction given on the first day, not to decode the entire text. “I wanted to be completely sure. When Gaius left, I was testing the idea. It still might have been a coincidence, a few letters coming together by chance and forming a word.”