“Sorry.”
Toby patted the seed across the paper toward Lorn, leaving a trail of tiny black dots and dashes. He sniffed the trail, opening his mouth to draw the scent across his glands. There was another smell under the powerful aroma of lemon. Silvery images zipped across his mind, leaving a salty aftertaste. It reminded Toby of the stomach remedies Master O’dorn sometimes drank on stressful days, something he’d done a lot just before the tom had left for the academy.
“Look at this,” said the tom, patting the paper.
“What’s that?”
“I’m not sure. It appeared where the seed touched the paper. Smells a bit like a stomach remedy. Do you think this really is my father’s letter?”
“Maybe. You said the dots formed just where the seed touched the paper?”
Toby nodded. Lorn stared at the page, then looked off to his right. He closed his eyes and frowned. He grinned and grabbed the lemon, then rubbed it over the paper. Toby gasped.
“What are you doing?”
“Something Uncle Hecktor taught me. See, if you use a certain kind of ink, it will disappear after it dries. When you rub a lemon slice over the page, the ink reappears.”
“Why not just use a spell?”
“Because that’s the first thing a mage will think of,” said Lorn, frowning.
As Toby watched, writing began to appear on the blank page. The orange tom gaped. When Lorn finished, the entire page was covered in writing.
“I don’t think this letter was written by your father. At least, not entirely.”
Toby recognized his father’s sharp lines at the top of the paper, but the poem was written with a number of flourishes very unlike Victor’s efficient penmanship.
“I think you’re right. But whose handwriting is that?”
Lorn looked at the lemon, then back to the page.
“It’s Uncle Hecktor’s.”
“How is that possible? Master O’dorn worked with your uncle a lot. Wouldn’t he have known his handwriting?”
“I doubt it. Uncle Hecktor was a master at copying other people’s handwriting. He told me it was important to learn how to tell the difference between a person’s real writing and someone else’s copy of it.”
“So, if your uncle copied someone else’s handwriting, whose did he copy?”
“That’s a very good question. Without having a sample of the original, I’m not sure I could figure it out.”
“Well, I’m sure we can’t get samples of everyone’s handwriting in the entire kingdom just to compare them with this. Have any other ideas?”
Lorn shrugged.
“We could always read it.”
Toby rolled his eyes. The partners leaned over to read the newly revealed letter. While Victor’s paragraphs seemed pretty straight forward, the poems were just as Master O’dorn had said, pretty words strung together. Toby stared into the fire, letting the words play in his head. Lorn stood up, crossed his arms and snorted.
“That was helpful.”
Toby shushed the young mage. He continued to stare into the fire. For some reason the image of the medallion on the loner’s wall kept surfacing when he concentrated on the words of the poem, but try as he might he couldn’t make the connection. The tom sighed and looked up at the boy.
“You’re right. There’s not much here that makes sense.”
“Aside from Uncle Hecktor’s love of lions who have won golden medals, the only other thing that sticks out is the number three.”
“And don’t forget Captain Fi Bonah of the Nahchee Clan. He was mentioned several times as well.”
“But what does it all mean?”
Toby watched as the young mage began pacing. He wondered how long it would take before their floor wore through to the room below as Lorn retraced his steps again.
“This is hopeless,” said the young mage, throwing his hands up.
Toby didn’t want to agree, but he couldn’t see where the boy was wrong. They weren’t trained for this. Not yet, at any rate. He considered taking the letter to Master Natsumi for help. The sleek silver tabby had seemed eager to see it. Toby shivered as he remembered her hunter’s gaze. He looked down at the letter and re-read the first paragraphs written by his father. It felt like the last link he had to the large black tom. He wasn’t ready to give it up yet.
“Maybe we should take it one piece at a time.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are four things in this letter that stick out to us, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Why don’t we do some research on each of those and see what we find?”
“What if they’re dead ends?”
“Maybe they will be, but it’s a place to start, isn’t it?”
Chapter 8
Having any luck?” Lorn rubbed his eyes. Two stacks of books rested at this elbow, a cup of untouched tea within arms reach.
“No. I know all kinds of great trivia now about lion racing in Kella, but nothing about any special golden medals. How ‘bout you?”
Toby arched his back in a spine popping stretch, then sat down, wrapping his tail around his toes.
“Well, I could tell you the history of every major clan in the last hundred years, but there’s no mention of any NahChee Clan anywhere, let alone anyone named Captain Fi Bonah.”
“Looks like I was right. This is a dead end.”
Toby lashed his tail.
“I’m not giving up.”
“I didn’t say we should.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I need a break.” The young human took a sip of tea and grimaced.
“Want me to warm that up for you?”
Lorn glared at the orange tom.
“I can do it.”
The boy placed his hands around the cup and stared into the brown liquid, muttering under his breath. Toby’s ears began to itch. He sighed and leaped under the table. A moment later he heard the sound of shattering porcelain followed by Lorn’s cursing. The young tom stayed under the table until his companion stopped dancing around holding his hands to his chest.
“When are you going to take care of that?”
“I have a special tutoring session with Master Baqer first thing in the morning. He seems to think he can help me ‘tame the wild beast that is your magic.’”
The young mage’s voice quavered and he gestured wildly in imitation of his teacher. Lorn grimaced. Toby kept still though he wanted to laugh. It was a perfect imitation. The only thing missing was the wild white hair and bushy eyebrows.
“Would you like me to help you with your hands?”
The young man shrugged and held them out. Toby floated the healing salve and cloth strips from a shelf to the table. With practiced efficiency, he moved some of the white goo from the container onto the human’s outstretched palms. A couple twitches of his tail completed the wrapping process.
“I know he’s weird, but I’ve heard his methods work — if you use them.”
“Whatever.”
Lorn uprighted his overturned stool and stared down at the tea stained pages of the open book he’d been reading. Toby looked at them, too, wondering what kind of punishment one gets for mutilating a library book. Probably lifetime detention with the librarian. A shiver ran down the young tom’s spine.
“Look at this.” The young mage pointed to a paragraph. The cat craned his neck to read a passage about transferring magical signatures between objects.
“So?”
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“It’s amazing what you can learn when you actually read a book instead of just copy spell ingredients and incantations.”
Lorn glared at Toby again.
�
�It says here that while this kind of spell can be done by any master mage it’s usually used by those who practice the shadow arts. Huh. I wonder why.”
“Maybe it’s because most mages don’t need to hide their signatures.”
“That makes sense.”
“Interesting as that is, though, it doesn’t help us figure out these code words.”
The young mage sighed, flopping down onto the stool. He shut the book, placed it on one stack and pulled another from the other pile. Toby did the same.
“Look on the bright side,” the young tom said, forcing his whiskers into a cat grin. “We still have a few more books to go through. Maybe there’s something in one of them.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
As the boy began to read, Toby glanced at the two stacks of books. The read pile was far larger than the to-read pile. His whiskers drooped. Yeah. Maybe.
Two weeks later, Toby and Lorn were no closer to breaking the code, although they had several interesting theories. A knock at the door interrupted the partners as they pored over more volumes on codes they’d borrowed from the school library. When Lorn turned from closing the door, the young tom noticed he was carrying a large package.
“Whose it from?”
“There’s no name on it.” Lorn opened the package.
“It looks like copies of some official documents. Look, that’s Uncle Hecktor’s handwriting. These must be some of the records that have been locked away.”
“Way to go girls,” said Toby, batting the air.
“There’s a letter, too.” Lorn placed the stack of papers on the table next to the tom with the letter on top.
Dear Lorn and Toby,
As you know, we could get into big trouble if anyone finds out we gave these to you. D. made the copies herself, so hopefully no one will notice. We didn’t see anything in them that was helpful, but a couple of them were rather unusual, as if M. R. was already losing his mind.
Don’t let anyone know where you got them if you’re found with them. And be careful. Any mention of M.R. here is like playing stick ball with a bee hive.
Sincerely,
Us
Toby patted the letter to the side. As they read each document, they saw what Alie was talking about. Several pages seemed to contain gibberish and odd phrases, much like Victor’s letter. There was another mention of Captain Fi Bonah and the number three was a prominent theme on one entire page.
Toby’s whiskers splayed as he looked at Lorn. The young mage grinned in return. They may be no closer to cracking the code, but they were sure they were on to something. The last page was nearly blank with only a paragraph of information on how the human body was different from the feline body. Toby leaned close to the page. A whiff of stomach remedy entered his nose. He turned to Lorn.
“Do we have another lemon?”
Lorn snatched a lemon slice from the saucer under his cup and rubbed the blank areas of the page. Faint lines appeared written in the same handwriting with the same flourishes as on Victor’s letter. Toby’s skin rippled from his shoulders to his tail as he read the lines.
So dark the time of man doth come
When Sneak doth death decide to run
And charge upon the willow’s sun
That blood be cold and change be done.
The Spider finds the widow’s peak
A cat doth spin his will to seek.
Should will define, the day be bleak
And hell upon mankind doth wreak.
“Either your uncle was truly mad, or there’s a lot more going on than we thought.”
“I vote for mad. None of this makes sense.”
Toby re-read the poem. Lorn was right. It looked like the gibberish of an addled brain. Yet, it felt like there was something more to it, something Toby just couldn’t quite get his claws into. He looked at the shuttered window, latched against the cool fall wind. The young cat lashed his tail, feeling as frustrated as the wind. The shutters rattled again. Toby blinked and cocked his head.
“The only way to open a window is to unhook the latch.”
“What?”
The young tom turned his gaze on his companion. Lorn was frowning.
“You have to unhook the latch to open the window or you can’t get in.”
“Are you okay? Do you need a break or something?”
Toby shook his head until his ears made a popping sound. He stared at the window again as the wind continued to rattle the shutters.
“I was just remembering the time I got locked out of Master O’dorn’s house. It wasn’t until I stopped trying to force the window open that I was able to get it open.” The young cat looked back at Lorn. The young man’s brows were puckered in confusion. Toby nodded to the piece of paper on the desk.
“We’re trying to force the poem to make sense as a code. What if we think of this as a poem instead?”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember in Basic Incantations we learned about crafting spells into poems so they’d be easy to remember?”
“Vaguely.”
Toby sighed. He’d thought Lorn had been taking notes on the lecture, but later he’d seen Lorn’s notes were a list of ingredients for a spell he’d found further on in their textbook. So far, the young mage hadn’t had time to try the spell out, much to Toby’s relief.
“Okay, so the easiest way to remember something is to make a rhyme of it. Rhymes are often formed into poetry. Poetry includes symbols, which lead back to the rhyme. The rhyme leads back to the thing you’re trying to remember. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“So what you’re saying is if we do some research on the symbols in this poem, we might understand what Uncle Hecktor was trying to say?”
“You got it.”
“Then let’s go,” said Lorn, snatching the page from the table and heading toward the door.
“Wait. The girls asked us to keep these secret. We can’t just go flashing them around the library.”
“Well, how are we going to know what to look up if we don’t take this with us? I know you have a terrific memory, but I think we need to be able to compare the whole poem to whatever we find.”
“What if we make a copy?”
“A copy of a copy? Would we be able to read it?”
“We would if we made a handwritten copy. Look, the ink is already fading again. If we hand write it out, you won’t need to carry lemon wedges in your pocket.”
“Hadn’t thought about that. It would look suspicious if we had to keep rubbing a lemon on a piece of paper, wouldn’t it.”
Lorn grabbed a pen and copied the poem in the same handwriting on a fresh sheet of paper. The young tom cocked his head as he watched.
“Why are you copying the handwriting, too?”
Lorn shrugged and stuffed the poem in his pocket.
“Habit.”
Toby blinked, wondering just how alike the boy was to his uncle. He glanced at the original papers, then flicked his tail and sent them into the hiding hole they’d created under a loose brick on the hearth. The young tom hurried out the door behind his partner, pausing only long enough to reset the dampening field on the room.
“You know the rules, apprentice. Until you return the books you’ve borrowed, you may not borrow any more.”
The librarian glared at the partners over the mountainous desk, her beaky nose wrinkled as if they’d been dipped in manure. Lorn slumped away toward the stack of books they’d left on the table. Toby clung to the boy’s shoulders as the young mage balanced another stack in his arms.
“I told you we should have brought those with us,” whispered Toby.
“Now what are we going to do?” asked Lorn, dropping the books on the table and earning a harsh shush
from the librarian. “Good thing we made a copy. It looks like we’ll have to do our research here for now.”
“Let’s at least take these to a back table.”
Toby floated several books and followed the young man toward another table in a dark corner. Lorn had yet to manage floating anything larger than a paper weight without turning it into a blazing fireball, but he was showing progress. They both agreed library books were probably not the best things to practice on. The boy carried as many as he could, while trying to see where he was going. He tripped, sending everything flying, including the poem.
“Well, well, well,” purred a familiar voice. “Look who dropped by.”
Snickers filled Toby’s ears. His skin felt hot. Lorn scrambled to pick up the books, casting apologetic glances at the librarian. Toby turned to face the white tom.
“What do you want, Reginald?”
“What could I want from probates?”
Toby glared at the tom, wishing Lorn would hurry up.
“Here, let me help you with that,” said the white cat, swishing his fluffy tail at the piece of paper. It rose into the air and floated toward the small group of cats.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“None of your business,” said Lorn, snatching at the paper as it flew past.
“Ooo. What a touchy human,” said one of the females.
“Could it be a love note, perhaps?” said another and giggled. Reginald peered down at the paper. His ears twitched. He looked up at Toby, then at Lorn. The mage’s ears looked as if they would burst into flames.
“Nothing so fun, I’m afraid,” said the white tom, flicking his tail at the paper to make it fly toward the partners. “It’s only the boy’s attempt at bad poetry.”
“Pity,” said the first female.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Reginald. “If they don’t succeed in magic, at least they have something to fall back on. I hear the Lower District is in need of minstrels now with so many having died.”
Apprentice Cat: Toby's Tale Book 1 (Master Cat Series) Page 17
