Teia went invisible, and they all got on the lift.
It was surprisingly easy to find, when they knew where to look. It was two and a half floors down from the top of the Prism’s Tower. Just below where security started.
They pushed against the wall, and a narrow section simply sank in and swung open on hidden hinges, the seam invisible in all but bright light.
There was a small vestibule on the other side with a brake so that an empty lift could be halted on its passage up or down.
Teia carefully checked the vestibule for traps, then they released their brake on the lift and soon watched it go, summoned by someone far below.
After parting a curtain and stepping into the darkness beyond the vestibule, they found a stone letterpad with the entire Old Parian alphabet on it.
Her heart sank.
When Quentin moved forward to examine it more closely, she said, “Careful. It’ll be trapped, somehow. The wrong code could wash the whole room with fire, for all we know. Maybe this one, maybe the one beyond.”
Quentin stepped away gingerly.
With paryl, it was obvious that five of the letters had been smeared with finger oils more often than any of the others. Some of the letters looked like they hadn’t been touched in years, and some had maybe been touched irregularly.
Teia relayed everything to Ben-hadad, who wrote down the letters in groups according to how much they appeared to have been touched.
“Well, there’s good news,” he said.
“You’ve taken up code breaking in the last year?” she asked.
“Not that good.”
Of course not. She hadn’t thought she’d be so lucky.
“It’s long,” he said, “and people are lazy, so it’ll probably be a word, or a phrase. Unfortunately, that means there’ll be repeats of letters, which makes breaking the code harder. And we don’t know how long the phrase is. And I don’t know Old Parian well enough to guess at letter frequencies. And it’s possible that if we make any errors, something bad will happen.”
“I’m still waiting for that good news,” Teia said, as Ben watched the lift shaft to time an approaching lift.
Weights plunged past them, and a moment later, a group of discipulae chatting with each other zipped by, none of them noticing the three in the darkness.
“Ah,” Ben-hadad said, “that’s what this drawing is. Correct number of weights on the line to tell you the lift is empty. Nice engineering all around. Here’s an empty one now.”
Weights plunged past their faces; the desired number, apparently, because Ben applied the brake, and stopped the empty lift in front of them perfectly.
“You were saying?” Teia prompted.
“I was? Oh, oh, right. Well, if there’s one great thing about being brilliant, it’s that other brilliant people like talking to you. I know someone who might help.”
“Might?”
“She didn’t like me that much. Back in the day. That was a long time ago, though.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Magister Kadah.”
“Kadah! You’ve got to be joking. The woman’s a bitter little tyrant!” Teia had strong memories of her being the worst of their magisters.
“Yeah, but she’s also the only magister I know with an interest in cryptology. Six hours.”
“Six hours?” Teia asked. “To figure this out? How—”
“Actually, I have no idea,” he said. “I was just picking a number. Quentin, you memorized which magisters are lecturing where, right? Of course you did. You can point me in the right direction. Now, let’s get out of here before someone notices how long this lift has been stalled.”
Chapter 85
The world had not stopped moving simply because Kip was spending hours gambling its fate with his grandfather. Andross had handed Kip a few things and then hustled out of his apartments to take care of a dozen tasks for the defense of the Jaspers. As soon as he himself stepped out of the old man’s apartments with Corvan Danavis, he was met by no fewer than five messengers, not only updating him on the state of the defenses and the disposition of his forces but also asking that he request horses or oxen and wagons and various other things the Foresters needed permission for.
Kip directed those to report to the new high general, Corvan Danavis, who took it all in hand easily and promised to take care of it.
Winsen and Big Leo were there to guard Kip. Kip sent one of the messengers to find Ben-hadad—he was going to be figuring out mechanical things, so he needed the man’s engineering brilliance. Then he sent Winsen to go find Cruxer to summon him urgently.
“You tell him anything you have to to get him to come to me, you understand?” Kip said.
“Your wife said not to leave you for any reason,” Win said.
“And I’m telling you to move your ass to save Cruxer from doing something stupid. Come back with him.”
Winsen, nonplussed about being pitted against Tisis, looked over at Big Leo for help, but the big man shrugged. “As soon as you get back, there’ll be three of us with the boss.”
“You say that like Breaker’s the real boss,” Winsen said, but he left.
Corvan was scanning documents that had been brought to him by the numerous messengers that were also waiting for him—he’d learned it was faster and more accurate, he said, than listening through an entire report.
Not much seemed to surprise him about what he heard and read, though at one point, he said, “The Chromeria’s stockpiled that much black powder? The books never tell such things, but if we win, Karris will be the reason. Brilliant. Go on.”
His messengers were soon given orders in a clipped shorthand that they scribbled on parchment as he spoke. He’d checked his own outgoing messages, approved them, and sent them out before Kip was finished hearing the second of his.
They spoke together as they made their way to the lift.
“You brought how many war hounds?!” Corvan asked. “Cwn y Wawr – trained?”
“I’d more say they are the Cwn y Wawr,” Kip said, triggering the summon plate for a lift.
“Great, great, great. A hound’s speed and slipperiness will make them perfect message carriers. It’ll help with a real problem of communication. The battlefront is going to be the entire circle of the walls if we’ve got seven floating bane to deal with.”
“Uh . . . maybe you can rotate them through messenger duty?” Kip said. “They’ll serve where ordered, but you ever try to get a terrier to ignore a rat? Believe me, once you see them in their armor, you’re going to want them fighting on the front lines. Or as a reserve.”
Corvan nodded, and explained his strategies in broad strokes. He knew the Jaspers like the back of his hand, and had clearly been thinking about this for weeks, if not months. Bonus of being married to a Seer—who had also told him not to tell everyone at the Chromeria exactly what he was preparing for, for some reasons that she refused to explain—a drawback of being married to a Seer.
“I wish we had hours and hours,” Kip said as they got on the lift. He decided to take it down with Corvan, though he needed to go up to the roof.
“There are hard things we need to talk about, son,” Corvan said. “I’ve . . . got a lot of explaining to do to you. And forgiveness to ask.”