The Cipher

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  The explanation was all quite rational and comforting, making the arrival of the Jutras seem anomalous and insignificant. And maybe it was. Maybe it was a coincidence that they had arrived on the same day she’d discovered the treasonous contracts. But everything inside Lucy screamed Danger! There was terrible trouble brewing, and she could do little to stop it, not with the papers calling her a renegade majicar and a traitor. Not with a fire she’d started obliterating Salford Terrace. Not after she’d supposedly stolen the greatest blood oak find in centuries. The public had already convicted her. No one would trust anything she had to say—she wasn’t even sure Cousin William would. Not that she thought she’d be allowed to see him, even with the royal necklace. She was too dangerous.

  She read the gleefully condemning stories in bleak silence. Everything inside her ached to answer, to revolt, to somehow turn everything around. But she was paralyzed. The words surrounded her, washing over her like an inexorable tide, heavy and deadly. How could any one woman push back such a sea?

  She did not speak to Keros. He cooked for her, heated her bathwater, and poured her tea and brandy. So far he’d been as good as his word and had not betrayed her to anyone. But she dared not trust him. She kept herself tightly bottled, aware that he watched her obliquely as if she were some sort of wild animal—like she might turn rabid and attack. Even alone in her room, she neither cried nor ranted against her fate. Emotions did no good. She needed to be dispassionate. She needed to think and reason. She needed to make a plan.

  Thankfully the cipher remained quiescent on her arm. Its disks had turned gray and lifeless again. Lucy wondered if it had burned itself out in starting the fire. It was a majickal blaze, impossible to stop with mere water. Even the majicars fighting it were having little impact. The fire continued to eat through houses and businesses, coming ever closer to the shipyards and harbor. It seemed impossible to Lucy that she could be responsible for the devastation. She dared not think about it, about the lives lost or the cost. If she did, she’d sink in a bog of despair.

  But on the third day of her stay with Keros, she could no longer sit idle. She woke refreshed, the fatigue of her healing vanished. She dressed and went downstairs. Purpose lent energy to her steps. Today while the cipher remained silent, she had to start fighting back. And the place to start was with Marten Thorpe.

  “You’re talking today?” Keros asked when she greeted him. “I thought maybe my healing had withered your tongue.” Once again he was in the kitchen cooking. It seemed to be his haven.

  “I didn’t have anything to say.”

  “And now you do.”

  “I have questions.”

  “Do you?” He motioned her to the table, where he set bowls of porridge, a pitcher of cream, brown sugar, and stewed blueberries. “Sit down.”

  Lucy did as told, spooning sugar and blueberries onto her porridge and drizzling a healthy serving of cream on it. Her stomach cramped in anticipation and she ate fully half of it before she could slow down enough to talk.

  “Where can I find Marten?” she asked suddenly.

  Keros sat back, his brows lowering as he considered Lucy. “Is that wise? He’s betrayed you once. Surely he’d not hesitate to turn you over to the Crown Shields. There’s quite a reward.”

  “You didn’t seem to think he’d hurt me,” Lucy pointed out.

  “I said I find it hard to believe. But you do think so. And the reward is a tempting prize for a man like him.”

  Lucy shrugged. “I need answers.”

  “Very well. If I were looking for him, I’d go to Sweet Dreams, his brother’s bagnio. He’s a regular patron, and you wouldn’t have to leave the Riddles. If you go wandering about in the rest of the city, they’ll catch you. I shouldn’t like to see that happen.”

  “Why not?”

  He scratched his head consideringly. He wasn’t handsome, Lucy decided, watching him intently. His nose was long, his lips thin, his jaw rounded. His curly hair hung to his shoulders in a careless mop. But his eyes were riveting. They were deep-set and roiling with suppressed emotions—almost haunted. They made her want to trust him. She looked away, gritting her teeth. She didn’t dare.

  He leaned forward, laying his hand on top of hers, waiting until she looked up again. “I won’t betray you.”

  Lucy was still, caught again by that haunted look and the taut pull of his voice. She licked her lips and nodded. He sat back, returning to his breakfast. For a few minutes, the only noise in the kitchen was the scrape of spoons and the crackle of the kitchen fire.

  “Do you know anyone who can read Jutras?” Lucy asked, abruptly making the choice to believe him. She needed help, and she was running out of time.

  His attention sharpened. “Careful how you go. A question like that might make me think the papers hold more truth than I gave them credit for.”

  “I’m not a traitor,” Lucy snapped.

  He cocked his head. “Then why would you need someone to read Jutras?”

  The implication was clear. Even communicating with the Jutras was treason. And now a warship had sailed into the harbor. Was she conspiring with those aboard, sending secret messages perhaps? Lucy chewed the inside of her lower lip. How much to tell him? Finally she reached down to her satchel beside her chair and opened it, pulling out the contract. She slid it across the table.

  “Because I need to know what that says.”

  Keros unfolded it. “What is it?”

  “It looks like a contract.”

  “For what?”

  “Did I mention that I need someone to translate it?”

  He acknowledged her dig with a quirk of his lips, passing the parchment back.

  “I don’t know anyone. Marten may be your best bet. Or another sea captain. Those who often sail east would have reason to pick up the language.”

  Lucy clenched her teeth. Marten again. If she went to another captain and was caught, that person could be accused of conspiring with her. She couldn’t do that to anyone else. Enough of her friends and family were already caught in that trap.

  “Do you mind if I ask where you came by that document?”

  “I stole it.”

  “Who from?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I need to find out.”

  Keros tapped the table with his fingers. “You have the most vexingly cryptic way of answering the most straightforward questions. How can you not know who you stole it from?”

  “The name on the lading was Bernwick Corporation, but I’m not sure that they had anything to do with it. The contract was hidden in a false bottom.”

  “What makes you think it wasn’t Bernwick? Couldn’t they have tried to smuggle it?”

  Lucy nodded. “Of course. But—” She did not want to tell him about her blackmailer. “I have reason to believe it was someone else. The same someone who’s been feeding the newspapers their stories.”

  Now it was Keros’s turn to be silent. Lucy finished her breakfast and sipped her tea, lost in thought.

  “May I ask you a question now?”

  “You can ask.”

  His mouth quirked again. “Did you start the fire?”

  Lucy hesitated. Then nodded. “Sort of.”

  Surprise made his mouth fall open. He collected himself. “How? Are you a majicar?”

  A sudden recklessness seized her, and the urge to set the record straight about the fire. She was so tired of false accusations.

  “I’ve been attached by a true cipher. When I was cornered by the Crown Shields, it…exploded.”

  “You’ve…that explains a lot.”

  “Does it?”

  “That’s why they’re having so much trouble putting it out. It’s Errol Cipher’s majick. By the gods. We are in trouble. And it explains your hands. Both times.”

  Lucy made a small shrug of agreement.

  “May I see it?”

  “No. I appear to be the only one who can.”

  She pushed up her sleeve, exposing the cipher on
her arm. He stared.

  “Where is it?”

  “See what I mean?” She pulled her sleeve back down.

  “But you can see it.”

  “Oh yes. What fun would it be for Errol Cipher if his victims couldn’t see what was coming?”

  She rubbed her hands over her face, dragging her fingers through her hair, yanking with annoyance at the tangles. She hadn’t combed it in days. Nor did she intend to.

  “Do you have a pair of shears?”

  “Certainly.”

  He left and returned a few minutes later with a long pair of cloth scissors. He handed them to her. Lucy took them and, grasping a hank of her hair, cut through it. Keros watched silently as she clipped it all off, leaving the ends hanging ragged around her shoulders.

  “Charming. You’ll turn heads.”

  “Do you think you can do better?” Lucy held out the shears. “Be my guest.”

  He came around to stand behind her and began trimming the edges. When he was done, her haircut was more even, though it still resembled a raspberry bush. Lucy didn’t look at it. Her hair had been her vanity. Now it was a rat’s nest. She pulled the tangles out with her fingers and braided her hair in a fishtail braid down the back of her head. She tied it with a short length of brown ribbon that Keros handed her.

  He helped her sweep up the lengths of fallen hair and tossed them into the fire.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Quite a stench.”

  “It’s safer,” was his only explanation. He opened a window, waving a towel to push the smell out.

  “Wouldn’t majick be easier? For a lot of things?”

  He cast a sidelong look at her. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He sighed as if at a tired question. “First, it could interfere with the majick of the house. It could disrupt the wards and some of the conveniences. It takes planning to avoid that.”

  “But you healed me without planning. Twice.”

  “And it played havoc, I can tell you.”

  He shut the window and Lucy gathered up her satchel.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Sweet Dreams. To find Marten.”

  Keros nodded. “I’ll show you the way.”

  Two days later and Marten still had not appeared, and Lucy was growing angry. Her mood was not improved by the freezing rain that had begun earlier in the day. It glazed the cobbles and the bare trees in a slippery cocoon. Lucy watched the entrance of Sweet Dreams from where she crouched beneath a low stairwell in the alley opposite. Two mourning doves had taken refuge in the same space, cooing unhappily. Ice formed around Lucy’s feet and stiffened her cloak like wood. But she was not cold. Resentment danced in her blood like open flames. Marten should be here. He was a man interested only in pleasures of the body and the tables. A man who’d tricked her. Who’d played her like a maestro.

  It made her sick to think of her eager response to his confession at the Summerland’s ball. He’d lured her by pretending he was torn between his interest in her and his desire to be honorable. The bait had been flattering and Lucy went after it like a starving rat. She’d been such a credulous fool. He’d told her he couldn’t be trusted. Why hadn’t she believed that?

  And now, when he ought to be sticking to his usual foul habits, he’d become elusive. She ground her teeth. How much longer could she wait for him? She reached up and snugged her hood more closely around her head. If he didn’t show tomorrow, she’d go hunt for him.

  She was still watching when a carriage rolled up just before the seventh glass. Sylveth lamps lit the entrance of the building brightly so that Lucy had no trouble seeing. Two men alighted. She didn’t recognize the first. He was a stocky man, balding, with rich clothing and high-heeled shoes. He wore a heavy chain around his neck that glittered with precious stones, and he carried himself with an arrogance that came from money and power. The man with him—

  Lucy gasped, her hands leaping to press the sound back into her mouth. The man with him was the stranger of her childhood. She couldn’t breathe. She huddled into herself, frozen still, as if that could protect her.

  He’d aged, of course. It had been nearly twenty years since he’d held her by the neck and tried to choke her. His dark hair was streaked with gray, and it was receding. His face was sharper. He remained slender, his clothing the height of fashion. Though he was smiling, the expression was thin and cruel. He was listening to his companion with desultory interest, swinging a knob-headed cane as his trunks were unloaded.

  The carriage rolled away and the two men went inside. Lucy slumped, her heart pounding so hard that she thought it must tear through her chest. She pressed her fist against her throat. She could almost feel his hand sliding slowly around her neck, his fingers biting into her flesh. What was he doing here? It wasn’t coincidence, any more than the arrival of the Jutras ship.

  She crawled out of her hidey-hole, feeling like a crone. She turned and staggered blindly back toward Keros’s house. He had to be her blackmailer—she’d revealed her ability that day. He’d probably been spying on her ever since. Somehow—but how?—he’d puzzled out that she was collecting true ciphers. It gave him the leverage he needed to blackmail her.

  Every thought of Marten evaporated as she began to run through the night. All that remained was her memory of being trapped against a stack of crates fighting off the stranger, and an unrelenting compulsion to get inside Sweet Dreams and find out who he was and what he was planning, before the Jutras attacked and overran Crosspointe. She shuddered. She’d rather her family ended on the Bramble than in the hands of the Jutras.

  As she ran, serpentlike heat uncoiled up her arm and burrowed through her body as the cipher woke again.

  Chapter 19

  It had been three and a half days and there was still no word from Jordan. Marten had been scouring the Riddles in search of Lucy, his hood pulled low so that no one would see his face and wonder at his two black eyes, puffed-up jaw, and swollen lips. The Riddles was a frustrating place, with streets that went nowhere, bridges between buildings, doors that covered walls, and walk-ways that went through buildings and ended up belowground. It was easy to get lost once he left the small zone he’d become acquainted with. He’d been to see Keros once, but the majicar had not been home and the wards had not let him pass inside the house to wait. Not that Keros would be all that sympathetic once he knew what his friend had done. He didn’t mind Marten’s vices, but he had a strict sense of right and wrong. And while it wasn’t always so easy to predict where the line was, Marten didn’t doubt that he’d crossed it.

  His search had proved fruitless, despite questioning everyone he came across and offers of coins to loosen their tongues. Last night, he didn’t find his way out until close to dawn. His change purse was missing, the strings hanging free from his belt. His watch had been stolen and he’d nearly been dragged by the hair into the hovel of a lice-ridden whore. After a bath to scrub away any new creepy-crawly friends he might have gained from the encounter, followed by four hours of sleep to shave the edge off his exhaustion, he was ready to go again.

  Except that he should have heard from Jordan by now. Marten paced the foyer of his house, Baskin watching from the doorway into the front salon.

  “Why hasn’t he sent word? Surely he’d have discovered something by now. His father’s the cracking lord chancellor.”

  “Mebbe took longer than he thought,” Baskin suggested.

  “Still, he’d tell me.” But would he? Jordan might be inclined to let Marten stew in his own juices. “We’re going over there. Get my cutlass.”

  There was no answer at Jordan’s home. Marten yanked the bellpull fiercely and then pounded on the door. Nothing. The shutters were closed, the place looking abandoned. A slatternly woman pushed open the bakery door downstairs of Jordan’s flat to stare at him suspiciously. Her hair and apron were liberally dusted with flour and her nose was red. She swiped an arm across it and sniffed thickly.

  Marten motioned for Baskin
to follow and walked to the end of the row, going around to the alley behind Jordan’s flat. He tried the back door, but it was locked. He stepped back, surveying the upstairs.

  “There’s a window open left of the balcony.”

  “Aye, Cap’n, so there is.”

  “Can you get up there?”

  “If’n I can climb to th’ top o’ th’ main in a gale blow, I can get up there.”

  Baskin handed his cloak to Marten and scurried up the wall like a spider, finding hand-and toeholds in the half-timbering. He clambered over the balcony rail and leaped to the ledge of the window, pulling himself through the opening. Moments later he thumped down the stairs to unlock the back door. His seamed face was grave.

  “It’s ugly, Cap’n. Master Truehelm’s been killed.”

  Marten froze for an instant, then dashed up the stairs three at a time. At the top, he slowed, crossing the landing into the dining room. Beyond was the salon. Here the furniture was tossed about like thrown dice. There was shattered crockery on the floor and smears of blood on the walls. The pocket doors leading into the sitting room where Marten and Jordan had talked days before hung drunkenly.

  Marten followed the trail of blood and destruction into a short corridor on the other side. The first room was an office. It was empty and untouched, as was the bedroom next to it. At the end was a last room and this was where he found Jordan. He lay spread-eagled on the bed, his hands and feet tied to the posts. He was naked to the waist. His face and chest had been battered and his wrists and ankles were raw from where he’d struggled against the ropes. His throat had been slashed and blood stained the sheets and congealed on the floor. His skin was gray and his eyes stared blankly above sunken cheeks.

  Marten could only stare. Who had done this? Why? He started when Baskin came up beside him.