“Now, I can’t rightly claim to have thought this one up,” the dwarf admitted. “There’s wheels like this in Redweir, turned by the Strow. Or at least, there used to be. Who can say what’s come of that town?”
Malden nodded solemnly. News from the eastern half of Skrae was rare as hen’s teeth, but all of it was bad. Those few travelers who actually came as far as Ness now reported a countryside ravaged by barbarians, full of bandits and starving peasants too terrified to leave their homes in search of food.
“For the nonce, at least, we’ll have flour,” Malden said, because that was what Slag wanted to hear. “You’ve done a wonderful job here. The city will give you a medal, or some commendation. I’ll see to it.”
“Lad, bollocks on that. You know I don’t care for honors. I’m trying to help you, that’s all. And maybe I can offer you something else today, if you’ll step into my office.” The dwarf’s eyes burned with excitement as he led Malden into a shack at one corner of the millyard. It was cold inside, and cramped-the ceiling was far too low for Malden’s comfort-but once he saw what the dwarf had in mind, he could not look away.
A piece of parchment lay weighted on a table. On it was a message written in dwarven runes, with beneath each rune a character from the alphabet of Skrae. This second set of characters was grouped into individual words.
“You’ve deciphered it?” Malden asked, breathless. Cutbill’s message had become a touchstone for him, a hope he could cling to no matter how dark things got. He had convinced himself, with no evidence whatsoever, that if he could only read it, all his problems would be solved. In his more lucid moments he knew that was folly, but with so many people believing in him, he needed something he could believe in. “But no,” he said, glancing at the alphabetical marks. “No, it’s still gibberish.”
“Trust a guildmaster of thieves to be paranoid,” Slag said. “He used not one cipher, but three. First the symbols on the original ledger page, which were then revealed to be substitutes for dwarven runes. I had to convert the runes to your tongue, by comparing the sounds they stand for. That wasn’t simple! And even then the wrong man wouldn’t be able to read it, because he ciphered the runes as well.” Slag shook his head. “Crafty bastard.”
“One step closer,” Malden said. He had not expected it to be easy.
“More than that. Look here. This last word in the message-ASRZGJJ. Does it look familiar at all?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Slag groaned. “Think, lad! Use the damned skills Coruth gave you. It’s a substitution cipher. A rotation cipher, I warrant, or blind me with a stick. Seven letters. The last two the same. Think!”
Malden wished the dwarf would just tell him the answer. He hadn’t slept more than an hour or two in days. Every time he closed his eyes he saw only the fear in the priest’s eye as his food was taken away. He could use something easy, for once. But-all right, he thought. Work it through.
Seven letters. Two the same, at the tail. Think of words that end with a double letter, most of them end in TT, SS, or-ah-LL…
“It’s a signature,” Malden exhaled. “It’s-”
“Cutbill’s name, ciphered!” Slag agreed. “And more than that, it’s a partial key to the whole fucking thing! Now I know every time the letter J appears in the message, it’s actually an L. Every A stands in place of a C. Fill in the rest, and we have it.”
“We… have it,” Malden said.
“Together we can solve this in an hour,” Slag said, nodding happily.
A strange fear gripped Malden. So close. He desperately wanted to read the message. And yet-if he did-his one hope would be gone. There couldn’t possibly be anything in the message to solve his problems. It just wasn’t long enough.
Yet he had to know. He must know what Cutbill had deemed so important it had to be kept so carefully secret.
“I’m supposed to go address a meeting of the wool carders’ guild right now,” Malden said. “After that I’m supposed to sit in judgment at the hall of justice. Velmont has my whole day sewn up with meetings and audiences.”
“So-you don’t want to work on this right now?”
“Blast you, no, that’s not what I meant at all. I meant bar the door, so when Velmont comes looking for me, he can’t get in. And hand me that quill!”
Chapter Seventy-Three
Croy kept his horse to a walk as they crept slowly through the fens north of Easthull. This was Greenmarsh, once the most politically influential district of Skrae. Now it was firmly entrenched with barbarian pickets. He had to maintain constant attention on the hunched trees around him, which could hide anything, and also the soft ground, lest he become trapped in the mire.
Bethane’s presence behind him did not help. They had been unable to find another mount for her-the barbarians had scoured this land for every bit of horseflesh they could find. Having to share wasn’t the problem, though. The girl was light enough not to overburden Croy’s horse, and she never complained about her uncomfortable position sitting on his cantle. She kept her arms wrapped around his waist, but not so tight that he couldn’t breathe.
No, the problem was that she kept talking. He had convinced her to keep her voice to a low whisper, but she was his queen, and he could not command her to be silent. He never responded to what she said, but that didn’t seem to dissuade her.
“When I am reinstated at Helstrow,” she said, excitement plain in her voice, “I will command a great tournament to honor the sacrifice of all our brave men. Knights will come from every land to prove their mettle and their honor. There will be bright pavilions all around the fortress, a great sea of them in every color. Of course, preference will go to the green tents, and the white.”
Croy had been following a deer trail through the swamp, a narrow track barely visible even by brightest daylight. His horse could find it better than he could himself, shying on its hooves whenever it stepped off the trail and into the thicker vegetation to either side. Now that the sun was setting, the horse seemed less sure of itself, and Croy wondered how he would find his way in the dark. But they could not stop now.
“There will be jongleurs, and fools, and the dwarves will demonstrate their marvelous creations. I will have a great fountain built, which will spray water ever so high in the air, so that men will delight to watch it go up, and wonder at how long it takes to come down again. There will be falcons, and much sport from their flights, and their handlers will be gallant men with steely eyes who never speak except to command their fierce birds.”
Up ahead something blocked the trail. Not a roadblock-the barbarians would never waste time closing off a path so far away from civilization. No, it looked perhaps like a massive deadfall, as if a cyclopean chestnut tree had fallen and its roots were sticking up in the air, thick with moist earth. Croy searched the ground around this obstacle with his eyes, looking for a way to circumvent it.
“The ladies of my court will be all in linen and velvet, and they will embroider teasing mottoes inside the sleeves of their gowns, so that any man who ventures to peek inside will find himself made a figure of fun. And there will be great competitions of skill. Archery contests that will go on all day. And men will try to climb greased poles, or capture chickens set loose in a paddock. Oh, it will be humorous to watch their antics.”
As they came closer, Croy finally made out the truth of the obstacle. It was no fallen tree. Instead, it was a pile of corpses clotted with gore, their bones picked at by birds. Even from a distance he could see the wounds that had slain these men. Axe cuts had lopped off arms and ears and faces. The bodies were still dressed in the colors of Skrae. Were these some men from his rabble, the one he’d lost on the road to Morgain’s berserkers? Or were they simple deserters, thinking to save themselves from certain death, only to find it again here, in this forgotten place? Whoever slaughtered them had deemed them unworthy of even a simple burial. They had been left to rot where they lay. Croy’s shoulders stiffened at the sacrilege, and he felt Bethane lift her head.
“Is something wrong, Sir Croy?” she asked.
“No, your highness.” Croy tried to think of what to say. How would Malden handle this? The thief had always been a great flatterer, and very good at smoothing over unpleasantness. “I was only… struck by the grandeur of your vision. Please, close your eyes, the better to see such beauties, and the better to relate them.”
