So perhaps the formula she should have been looking for was not a mathematical one, but a chemical one. When she saw the diagrams for toluene, xylene, and mesitylene she began to see how it might work. Each compound was constructed from a benzene ring with methyl groups attached in different positions. Perhaps, then, each ring on the box represented a different compound and the objective was to somehow align the corners as they were shown in the diagrams. But which compounds?
Then the code of the inlaid woods came clear to her. The blond-colored hexagons were carbons, the red ones were hydrogens. The other colors probably stood for elements like nitrogen or oxygen. The chemical formulae were written right on the box for all to see.
After an hour of scribbling and looking up formulae, she was racing down the steps again with her solutions in her backpack. She grabbed a pastry from the kitchen and ate it on her way, praying that Magister Pregaldin would not have returned.
He had not. The apartment still seemed to be dozing in its emptiness. She went straight to the box. As she dialed each row to line up the corners properly, her excitement grew. When the last ring slid into place, a vertical crack appeared along one edge. The sides swung open on hinges to reveal compartments inside.
There were no gold or rubies, just papers. She took one from its slot and unfolded it. It was an intricate diagram composed of spidery lines connecting geometric shapes with numbers inside, as if to show relationships or pathways. There was no key, nor even a word written on it. The next one she looked at was all words, closely written to the very edges of the paper in a tiny, obsessive hand. In some places they seemed to be telling a surreal story about angels, magic papayas, and polar magnetism; in others they disintegrated into garbled nonsense. The next document was a map of sorts, with coastlines and roads inked in, and landmarks given allegorical names like Perfidy, Imbroglio, and Redemption Denied. The next was a complex chart of concentric circles divided into sections and labeled in an alphabet she had never seen before.
Either Magister Pregaldin was a madman or he was trying to keep track of something so secret that it had to be hidden under multiple layers of code. Thorn spread out each paper on the floor and took a picture of it, then returned it to its pigeonhole so she could puzzle over them at leisure. When she was done she closed the box and spun the rings to randomize them again. Now she could push the top back down and lock it in place.
She walked home a little disappointed, but feeling as if she had learned something about her tutor. There was an obsessive and paranoid quality about the papers that ill fitted the controlled and rational magister. Clearly, there were more layers to him than she had guessed.
When she got home, she trudged up the stairs to return the encyclopedia to Hunter. As she was raising her hand to knock on his office door, she heard a profane exclamation from within. Then Hunter came rocketing out. Without a glance at Thorn he shot down the stairs to the kitchen.
Thorn followed. He was brewing coffee and pacing. She sat on the steps and said, “What’s the matter?”
He glanced up, shook his head, then it boiled out: “One of the suspects I have been following was murdered last night.”
“Really?” So he did know of Gmintas in hiding. Or had known. Thinking it over, she said, “I guess it was a good time for a murder, in the middle of the mourning.”
“It didn’t happen here,” he said irritably. “It was in Flaming Sword of Righteousness. Damn! We were days away from moving in on him. We had all the evidence to put him on trial before the Court of a Thousand Peoples. Now all that work has gone to waste.”
She watched him pour coffee, then said, “What would have happened if the Court found him guilty?”
“He would have been executed,” Hunter said. “There is not the slightest doubt. He was one of the worst. We’ve wanted him for decades. Now we’ll never have justice; all we’ve got is revenge.”
Thorn sat quiet then, thinking about justice and revenge, and why one was so right and the other so wrong, when they brought about the same result. “Who did it?” she asked at last.
“If I knew I’d track him down,” Hunter said darkly.
He started back up the stairs with his coffee, and she had to move aside for him. “Hunter, why do you care so much about such an old crime?” she asked. “There are so many bad things going on today that need fixing.”
He looked at her with a tight, unyielding expression. “To forget is to condone,” he said. “Evil must know it will pay. No matter how long it takes.”
“He’s such a phony,” she said to Magister Pregaldin the next day.
She had returned to his apartment that morning to find everything as usual, except for a half-unpacked crate of new artworks in the middle of the living room. They had sat down to resume lessons as if nothing had changed, but neither of them could concentrate on differential equations. So Thorn told him about her conversation with Hunter.
“What really made him mad was that someone beat him,” Thorn said. “It’s not really about justice, it’s about competition. He wants the glory of having bagged a notorious Gminta. That’s why it has to be public. I guess that’s the difference between justice and revenge: when it’s justice somebody gets the credit.”
Magister Pregaldin had been listening thoughtfully; now he said, “You are far too cynical for someone your age.”
“Well, people are disappointing!” Thorn said.
“Yes, but they are also complicated. I would wager there is something about him you do not know. It is the only thing we can ever say about people with absolute certainty: that we don’t know the whole story.”
It struck Thorn that what he said was truer of him than of Hunter.
He rose from the table and said, “I want to give you a gift, Thorn. We’ll call it our lesson for the day.”
Intrigued, she followed him into his bedroom. He took the rug off the freezer and checked the temperature, then unplugged it. He then took a small two-wheeled dolly from a corner and tipped the freezer onto it.
“You’re giving me the ice owl?” Thorn said in astonishment.
“Yes. It is better for you to have it; you are more likely than I to meet someone else with another one. All you have to do is keep it cold. Can you do that?”
“Yes!” Thorn said eagerly. She had never owned something precious, something unique. She had never even had a pet. She was awed by the fact that Magister Pregaldin would give her something he obviously prized so much. “No one has ever trusted me like this,” she said.
“Well, you have trusted me,” he murmured without looking. “I need to return some of the burden.”
He helped her get it down the steps. Once onto the street, she was able to wheel it by herself. But before leaving, she threw her arms giddily around her tutor and said, “Thank you, Magister! You’re the best teacher I’ve ever had.”
Wheeling the freezer through the alley, she attracted the attention of some young Wasters lounging in front of a betel parlor, who called out loudly to ask if she had a private stash of beer in there, and if they could have some. When she scowled and didn’t answer they laughed and called her a lush. By the time she got home, her exaltation had been jostled aside by disgust and fury at the place where she lived. She managed to wrestle the freezer up the stoop and over the threshold into the kitchen, but when she faced the narrow spiral stair, she knew this was as far as she could get without help. The kitchen was already crowded, and the only place she could fit the freezer in was under the table. As she was shoving it against the wall, Maya came down the stairs and said, “What are you doing?”