The Cipher

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  Her cipher still glowed. She used it to guide herself to the inspection station, where she set down the box. She examined it, turning it over. She doubted she could just break it apart. The majick locking it would likely also protect it from damage. But she had to try.

  Lucy picked it up overhead and slammed it against the floor. It bounced and tumbled on end. The sound was like a thundercrack in the dark warehouse. She winced, hunching down into herself and looking furtively about. There was no answering alarm, only the wind. Lucy picked up the box and examined it. As expected, not even a scratch. She dashed it against the floor again, then stamped her heel down onto the wide, flat top. No effect. She tried again, this time jumping onto it with all her weight. Still nothing.

  She set it on the desk, panting with her exertions. Her chest ached and her heart pounded. From fear, from failure—she didn’t care to consider the cause. The glow of the cipher flared. If this had been an inspection, she’d have had a majicar open it. If he couldn’t, she’d have it sent to the central customs office. The owner would be notified to appear and open the box, and would be charged an extra fee for the trouble. But this was not an inspection, she didn’t have a majicar, and she had to open it.

  Furiously she slapped her left hand down on the box and flung it away. As she did, a feeling shuddered through her, like a thick thread ran down her arms and legs and was given a sharp jerk. A loud crack! shattered the air and a burst like a great gust of wind blew Lucy backward a dozen feet. She landed hard on her back, her head snapping against the floor.

  Lucy blinked her eyes. Her head hurt. Her back ached. It was dark as night. Where was she? She turned her head and realized she was lying on a stone floor. She sat up stiffly, gasping as pain drilled down her spine and spread out along her ribs. She braced her hands on either side of her, waiting for the feeling to pass. With clumsy fingers, she explored her head. A painful bump protruded from the back of her skull. She winced as she touched it. Frowning, she struggled through the fog in her mind to remember what happened. The box. She’d thrown it. And something had happened. Majick. The cipher.

  She glanced down at her arm. The white light that had lit the way inside the warehouse was gone. Now the cipher glimmered a dull dishwater gray. She clambered slowly to her feet, using its dim light to guide her to the customs inspector’s desk. She inched around to the shelves behind and went to the end where a tall cabinet stood locked. She used her seal to open it, fumbling for a lantern and striker from those lining the third shelf. They were used by clerks to illuminate the deeply shadowed recesses of stacked cargoes.

  It took twelve frustrating attempts before she lit the wick. It flared to golden life, seeming to warm the air. Lucy picked up the lantern and swung about slowly. She held it high, searching for the box. She found it where it had crashed into a tall stack of barrels. It lay tilted on its side, the lid open. A charred mark on the top obliterated the carving. She eyed it wonderingly, glancing down at the dull gray glow emanating from beneath her left sleeve. The cipher had broken the locking spell.

  Gingerly, Lucy picked the box up. She carried it to one of the sorting tables, setting the lamp close. With shaking fingers, she pushed open the lid. Inside was a tray of jewels, ranging in size from robins’ eggs to hens’ eggs, and held in place by silver brackets. Some were faceted, others smoothly rounded, and none worth less than a hundred dralions.

  Lucy frowned at them. Despite their tremendous value, she hadn’t been expecting anything so…prosaic. She picked a purple dawnstar from its nest and turned it over. It appeared to be flawless. She fitted it back under its brackets and selected a black stone with silver sparkles inside like the night sky—Braken’s heart. It was very rare. She’d seen only one other before, and that on the chest of the king. Still…all of this for gems? None were illegal. The tariffs would be expensive, but certainly anyone who had the money to purchase these could also afford to pay the taxes.

  Unless the blackmailer didn’t own them. Perhaps he’d stolen them. Or more likely, Lucy had just stolen them for him. But even that didn’t seem right. Not when he’d had her watched for so long. Not with what he was holding over her head. He’d not waste such a powerful trump card on smuggling jewels, not when he could use it for something far greater.

  There had to be more to it.

  She put the Braken’s heart back into its nest and began examining the rest of the box. She took a thin knife from her satchel and dug under the silk liner in the lid and then under the jewels. Nothing. She turned up the wick in the lantern and explored the outside of the box. Excitement made her catch her breath. There was a fine crack along the bottom that she hadn’t noticed before. It was too straight to be caused by the explosive opening of the box.

  She inserted the tip of her knife into the seam and pried it open. The wood splintered and a panel popped open, exposing a shallow pocket about a hand’s width wide and two long. Inside were folded parchments. Lucy pulled them out and then dropped them, shaking her fingers. They were majicked. And they stung. She reached for them again, ignoring the itching pain running up her fingers. She unfolded the first one. It looked like an official document, but she couldn’t read it. It was written in another language. She bent close. She knew the basics of a dozen languages—she’d had to learn in order to do her work. But this—it was tantalizingly familiar, though she could read none of it.

  Her gaze traveled slowly down to the bottom. There was an enormous splotch of purple wax that had been impressed with a seal. She frowned at it. And then she knew. Her heart spasmed and it was hard to breathe. It was Jutras. She quickly unfolded the other two parchments. They were identical to the first. A contract, she realized. They had each been signed, and there was a space at the bottom for another signature and seal.

  Someone in Crosspointe was consorting with the Jutras.

  A frisson of fear shivered through her as she sank down onto the edge of the table, the air going out of her. “Braken’s cods,” she whispered. “What’s going on?”

  Who in Crosspointe would have anything to do with the Jutras? They were evil—Lucy could think of no other word for them. They spread through the eastern lands around the Inland Sea like an unending tide of ravenous sylveth spawn. They absorbed the people they conquered, turning them into warriors and slaves. It wasn’t fight or die, but fight or see your families slaughtered and eaten like cattle. Lucy shivered. The Jutras atrocities and their rapacious devotion to the spread of their empire was unrelenting. They sought to bring every living creature under their domain—any that refused were murdered. As they engulfed more countries, their hunger only grew, and with it, the size of their army. Crosspointe’s only defense from invasion was the Inland Sea. The Jutras couldn’t cross—they had no Pilots, thank the gods. But perhaps they had another way, with the aid of a traitor.

  Lucy made a sound of horror. She had to do something.

  She stared at the parchments, her mind tangling in itself. Her first instinct was to take the documents to the king. Each member of the royal family could show his or her necklace and gain instant access to the king’s presence. But what would happen then? Certainly William would believe her. But in recent years there had been growing discontent with his rule. The Chancery suit further undermined his authority. It had made the entire royal family look like profligates—leeches on society—as no doubt was the intention. No, William might believe her, but everybody else would point the finger at her, accused as she was of stealing the blood oak. And certainly the blackmailer would do as promised and she’d be in the night’s papers, her collection of true ciphers exposed. It would only confirm she was a traitor. They’d say the contract was her doing, that bringing it forward was just a devious plot to deflect the blame from herself onto some made-up scapegoat. If William decided to believe her, he would be castigated, perhaps even accused of being part of the plot.

  She rubbed her forehead, feeling the beginnings of a headache. Just the threat of the Jutras gaining any sort of foothold i
n Crosspointe would cause riots. It was easy enough to ignore the threat when the Inland Sea prevented the Jutras from ever setting foot on Crosspointe soil, but if that protection was threatened—

  Lucy swallowed, breathing slowly, trying to think. The smartest thing to do would be to learn what the contract said and whom it was meant for. Then she could present the evidence to William. If she had proof, it wouldn’t matter who she was. She licked her lips. If the cipher on her arm didn’t kill her first. She shook her head resolutely. No. She wouldn’t let it.

  As if she could stop it.

  A chill swept down her legs as she refolded the parchments with slow precise care. There was more going on here than she’d dreamed. This wasn’t just about her—it really wasn’t about her at all. She was a means to undermine King William, and perhaps open the shores to a Jutras invasion. She snarled in the gloom. Not if she could damned well help it!

  She looked at the ruined box. She couldn’t put the parchments back inside. Nor could she take them home or anywhere else the blackmailer might expect. She had to hide them.

  She thought for a moment. And then she had it. Quickly she removed the jewels from their nests and put them in her satchel. She sealed the box in an empty crate and put it under a stack of empty bins and cartons. No one would look there for it soon and when someone found it, it would be hard to connect it to her without something to identify where it came from. She put the lantern away. With quick, jerky movements, she pulled off her cloak, removing her bright saffron customs surcoat and wadding it up in a ball. She shoved it behind a set of shelves before donning her cloak again and slipping outside.

  The wind had increased, and now it smelled of dampness, as if rain would be following soon. Lucy hunched into her cloak, pulling her hood up over her hair, and angled back toward the docks. At the end of the complex she crossed an alley into another running behind a row of houses and shops. At the far end was a small building standing by itself. It was made of dark gray slate with white windows. Lucy went up to the cellar doors. She grasped the handles and felt a tingle in her palm as the locking spell released. She levered open one side and clambered onto the steps. As she descended, the wind snatched the door, heaving it upward. Lucy grappled it, her feet lifting into the air. Then the wind let go suddenly and the door dropped with a crash.

  Lucy clutched the handle, scrabbling to find a foothold in the darkness. At last she balanced on a step and eased downward, holding her hands out in front of her, banging her knee against the corner of a table. She swore softly and vehemently, but didn’t stop. On the other side of the cellar was a blank wall made of brick. She felt her way down to the corner of the wall and reached her fingers up over her head. At last she found what she was looking for: three small depressions in the mortar between two bricks. She held her fingers there for a moment. A tingle and the sound of a muted snick marked the opening of a hidden door. She pushed it open and a sylveth light sprang to life in welcome.

  She stood in a small, square room. The walls were lined with roughly constructed shelves holding a myriad of ship equipment, tools, blankets, clothing, boots, oil-skins, rope, buckets, grease pencils, and paintbrushes. A stack of chests and ditty boxes filled the bottom shelves. There were a dozen mismatched oars leaning in one corner, and bolts of sailcloth in another. On the wall in between was an iron door.

  The room smelled musty and briny, though it was as dry as toast. Lucy glanced up sharply as the ceiling creaked beneath the weight of someone walking across the upstairs floor. The house was a flophouse for those members of the royal family who worked on the water and who needed temporary quarters. It wasn’t well-known outside of those who had cause to use it and only those who wore the necklace could open the locks and enter. Lucy had slept here on occasion, when she was too tired to go home between shifts.

  The storage room she was standing in wasn’t meant to be kept secret from anyone. It had been hidden entirely by accident. At some point, workmen had been hired to rebrick the walls in the cellar and had covered the doorway. The discovery wasn’t made until the mortar had hardened. By then, it was too much trouble to remove the bricks and instead the door had been majicked to open when someone pressed the proper indentations. The door on the opposite wall led to a tunnel below the quay that emptied out onto a narrow wooden dock. During high tide, the dock was calf-deep in water. But for those staying at Crossley House, it meant a handy and free place to tie up a dinghy.

  Lucy crossed the room and was about to go through the iron door when the stack of oilskins caught her attention. She fumbled in her satchel for her knife and sawed off a sleeve of one of the overcoats. She pulled out the Jutras contracts and slid them quickly inside, the sting of their majick making her teeth itch. She was about to fold them up, then hesitated. Slowly she withdrew one of them. If she was caught with it, they’d put her on the Bramble ship without stopping to ask questions. But if she wanted to find out what it said, she had to find someone who could translate it. Which meant keeping a copy with her.

  Not giving herself time for second thoughts, she thrust it into her satchel. She quickly finished folding the ends of the sleeve tightly around the remaining copies to keep out the damp and opened the door. Darkness filled the tunnel like night. Just inside was a bucket of sand containing a handful of upended candles. Above it was a shelf holding a striker. She lit a candle and hurried out into the gloom, closing the door firmly behind her.

  The passageway was low and she was forced to duck as the floor rose slightly and then evened out. She could hear the sounds of the wind rushing and waves washing against the shore. She crossed under the quay, coming to the top of a short stairway cut out of the rock. The steps were slippery with moss and damp. She eased down carefully and then took a sharp turn to the right, arriving on a wooden pier nestled in a natural alcove. It was unoccupied. The tide was coming in and waves slapped at the footings. The wind scooped into the rocky recess like cold, digging fingers. Lucy shivered, dropping her extinguished candle in the waiting bucket. She glanced about furtively, making sure that no one could see her.

  The narrow dock was bracketed on either side by towering outcroppings that protruded ten feet or more into the water. Above, the heavy wooden beams of the quay provided a roof. On the left, the customs docks stretched out in the harbor. Lucy could see inspection teams swarming the decks of the ships that rocked and bobbed on the choppy waves. On the right, the expansive commercial docks owned by the Weverton family began. There was less activity there, as most of those ships waited for inspection. With the strike, there were no stevedores or lighters crisscrossing the waters, no cranes of netted cargo swinging back and forth, and no gangs of boisterous truckers waiting to haul the goods away. But rather than tranquil, the quiet seemed tense, explosive. Like a thunderstorm building. Lucy could almost feel the commerce in Sylmont grinding to a halt. If it didn’t resolve soon, there might be riots as mercantile shelves emptied and didn’t refill. During Chance, Crosspointe was entirely cut off by the storms. If there was a food shortage, it would get very ugly.

  But the lack of traffic was good for her today. She retreated to the back of the alcove, where a rusting ladder clung to the rock. It led up to a narrow pocket below the quay. A person could worm his way beneath to an opening near one of the support pilings. It was designed as an escape hatch in case someone got caught in a storm surge or a spring tide.

  Lucy slung the long strap of her satchel over her chest and mounted the ladder, the oilskin packet clutched in her hand. She paused at the top, searching. A number of deep cracks ran through the stone. She stretched far to the left. Here the shadows disguised the wall—the sun never shone here. She pushed the packet deep inside one of the cracks until she couldn’t see it. It should be safe enough. It was unlikely the Chance storms would drive the waves high enough to wash it out. She gave a mental shrug. It would have to do. She didn’t have any other ideas.

  She climbed up over the top of the ladder and worked her way toward the misty lig
ht falling down through the opening up to the quay. She hoisted herself slowly up out of the hole, keeping herself hidden behind the piling. She peered out in both directions, her stomach clenching. She saw no one. Had she outstripped the blackmailer’s spies?

  At that moment the wind gusted and the pewter skies opened up. Rain sizzled across the water. The leading edge fell over Lucy and in moments she was drenched. She stared a moment in annoyed surprise. Her cloak was majicked against weather. All the same, it was soaking up the wet like a sponge. She shook her head. The explosive breaking of the spell on the box must have destroyed the cloak’s protective spell as well. She gritted her teeth. The spell had cost three Hurn’s eyes. Half as much as she made in a month. Not that she was in danger of getting paid anytime soon. She gusted a sigh and struggled to her feet, making a dash for shelter. She instinctively turned away from the customs docks and headed into Tideswell.

  She’d not gone more than thirty feet when deafening alarm sirens shredded the air.

  Lucy halted midstride, spinning around, eyes darting as she searched for pursuers. There was no one. She shook herself. Sirens weren’t used for chasing down errant customs agents. Not even one who had an illegal hoard of true ciphers and had just become a thief. They were for emergencies—fires or…

  Cold realization seeped down inside her. Her body went taut with disbelief. She was too late.

  Invasion.

  Chapter 15

  The sirens shrieked like tearing metal. They erupted from stations all around the harbor, winding together in a skein of warning and distress. The air reverberated with the sound. The vibration sank inside Lucy and she shuddered. Then she began to run. Back toward customs.

  People boiled out onto the quay from either side. They carried barrel staves, knives, cudgels, loggerheads, boat hooks—whatever weapons came to hand. Many were striking lighters and stevedores. Their faces were white with disbelief and fear. They surged past the customs docks to the Tideswell platform. It was a wide space at the center of the quay. It was surrounded by statuary and stone benches and at the top sprouted the Maida Vale. The broad avenue skirted around the Riddles, meandering up through Cranford, Cheapside, Blackstone, and Salford Terrace, ending at the castle gates. The platform also gave an unimpeded view of the harbor’s mouth.