“What about the less common ones?” I asked.
“Poisonous, expensive, or both.”
I thought back to the dead Blade floating in my bedroom. “ ‘Too dangerous’ and ‘too expensive’ aren’t necessarily limiting factors here.”
Christiana shrugged. “Fine, I can test the others later, but I don’t think it will do us any good.”
“Why not?”
Christiana came back and leaned down over me. Nutmeg and musk, with an mild undertone of salt from her sweat, came to my nose. “Look at the line where all the writing stops before it reaches the far edge,” she said, handing me one of the slips. “That means whoever wrote this did something to the paper when he wrote on it, something that broke or stopped the writing at that point.” She straightened up and ran a hand absently through a loose strand of her hair. “If we want to break this, we need to physically do something to the paper-manipulate it in some way.”
I stared at the ideograph fragments, the dots and lines that surrounded them, and the razor-edged strip of whiteness that ran along one edge, cutting through the marks. I could feel something trying to take shape in the back of my mind, something from long ago, but, when I reached for it, it faded away.
“Have you tried folding it?” I asked.
“More ways than you can count. You can get a few marks to match up here or there, but the rest is still gibberish.”
I leaned back against the wall. My shoulders complained, but I ignored them. “We have to be missing something,” I said. “These were meant for Kin, not imperial spies. If someone was sending written instructions to Athel and Sylos, I don’t think he’d make the cipher more complex than the message.”
Christiana grunted and straightened up. She began to chew absently on her lower lip, twisting a strand of hair around her finger as she did so.
I looked up at Releskoi. “Should have taken the bet,” I murmured to him.
“What?” said Christiana.
“Nothing.” I levered my way to my feet and walked over to the desk. “These other reagents for invisible ink,” I said, turning around to face my sister. “How hard are they…?” And I froze.
She was standing, looking at me, arms crossed. The strand of hair she had been playing with now hung beside her ear. It had curled slightly from her worrying it.
“Your hair,” I said, pointing.
Christiana raised a hand self-consciously. “My hair? Drothe, what are you talking-”
I looked from her to the mosaic of Releskoi-at his staff with the parchment spiraling around it. At his credo written on the parchment.
Of course.
“There!” I said, pointing up at the Angel. “The staff. And your hair. And my own damn habit of wrapping the paper around my own fingers. I should have seen it!” I brandished one of the strips. “You don’t fold it or hold it to a mirror or look for hidden writing,” I said. “You spiral it around something so the marks match up and form ideographs!”
Christiana’s eyes went wide. “A scytale cipher?” she said. “Those haven’t been used in centuries.”
“All the better,” I said. “Who would think of using something that old? You didn’t.”
Christiana humphed but didn’t argue. “It makes sense,” she admitted. “All they would need is the same diameter rod, and they could wrap the paper to either write or read the messages. It’s certainly simple enough for anyone to use. Did either of the corpses have a baton or rod of some sort? Something innocuous, that no one would question their keeping on them?”
I hadn’t seen Sylos’s body, but I’d gone over Athel’s things well enough to be able to see them again in my head. “A pipe,” I said. “Athel had a long-stemmed pipe. Sylos may have had the same.”
“I don’t suppose you still have it?”
“No,” I said. “But I remember what it looked like.” I began to tuck the papers away. “If I get over to Ash Street right now, I ought be able to cover at least a halfdozen pipe sellers before-”
“Nonsense,” said Christiana. She clapped her hands. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. And I’ll not sit around waiting while you do.”
Josef came gliding into the room, stopped at a respectful distance, and bowed.
“I find myself in need of tobacco pipes, Josef,” Christiana pronounced. “A wide array of tobacco pipes.”
“Very good, madam. How many tobacconists would you care to interview?”
“Start with a dozen.”
“And when would madam wish them to call upon her?”
“Immediately.”
Josef bowed again. “I will send runners at once. Shall I have them assemble in the solar?”
Christiana inclined her head. “Please. And inform Cook that Drothe and I will be taking an early dinner in the garden.”
Josef bobbed a third time and hurried from the room.
Christiana turned back to me and arched a satisfied smile. “And that, dear brother,” she said, “is how a baroness does ‘legwork.’ ”
Chapter Sixteen
They were just bringing down the shutters and closing the main door when I bulled my way into Baldezar’s shop. One of the older scribes stepped forward and tried to cluck at me about the place being closed for the day. I gave him the back of my hand. By the time I reached the stairway to the upper level, there was a visible trail of scattering scribes and drifting paper in my wake. I took the steps two at a time, strode to the master scribe’s door, and threw it open.
Desk, parchment, books, quills and ink, but no Baldezar.
I turned around and looked out over the shop, leaning on the walkway’s wrought-iron railing. I’d come straight from Christiana’s. The continued lack of sleep hadn’t improved either my mood or my appearance. “Where?” I demanded.
The room fell silent. I heard a piece of paper settle to the ground. A bottle rolled off a scribe’s stand and clattered on the floor.
“Where is your thrice-damned master?” I yelled.
“Gone.”
Lyconnis was standing in the doorway to the palimpsest room, where they scraped and cleaned parchment for reuse. His sleeves were rolled up, displaying a pair of thick, hairy arms. His apron had done little to keep the pumice and chalk dust off his scribe’s robe.
“Gone where?” I said.
Lyconnis shrugged.
“Up here,” I said. “Now.”
I went back into Baldezar’s office. Books and scrolls filled the shelves behind the desk, along with small boxes full of penknives, sharpening stones, mortars and pestles, uncut quills, seashells for holding pigments, and ink-stained rags. Save for a neat array of sealed ink pots, the desktop was bare.
I slipped in behind and tried the two drawers in the desk-locked. I pulled my spiders from my pocket, bent down, and got to work.
Feet thumped heavily along the walkway, came into the room, and stopped. I didn’t glance up.
“What are you doing?” said Lyconnis.
“Not what I was hoping to do, I can tell you that,” I said. I felt the pick catch on one of the wards in the lock, then slip free. I shifted the pick slightly, felt it miss again. Wrong head, I decided. I pulled the spider out and fished for another.
Lyconnis sighed and settled into the narrow chair on the other side of the desk.
“What has Master Baldezar done?”
“Lied, for a start,” I said as I selected a pick with a heavier curve and slipped it in alongside the tension wrench. “Forged a letter from my… patron. Set me up. Maybe even put a Blade on my trail.” I felt the pick slip past the ward, tickle a tumbler, and push it home. I moved on to the next one, then the third. I turned the tension wrench, felt the lock give, and heard a scraping click. I pulled the drawer open.
I looked up to find Lyconnis staring at me.
“He tried to have you killed?” he said.
“He sure as hell didn’t send flowers.”
“But… he hired… a… an…”
“Maybe,” I said, sitting down in Baldezar’s desk chair. “Maybe not. I doubt he could afford the people who were sent. But he had a hand in it.” I pulled the scraps of paper from my ahrami pouch, then reaching into my herb wallet, drew out the pipe Christiana and I had gotten from the sixth pipe merchant who had come calling.