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.From this distance, she couldn’t hear their grunts of effort or the songs they sang to keep the rhythm, but she could see that they had the anchor most of the way up.Rayn would be off to Inya, never to see her again.Behind her, the stairway door opened.“Celeste?”It was the empress.Celeste turned.“Your Imperial Majesty.”Vitala looked out into the harbor at Rayn’s ship and frowned.“Why are you on the roof?”“I needed fresh air.”Vitala’s brow furrowed.“I need you downstairs.Justien’s team has been searching Bayard’s home, and they’ve found a packet of enciphered letters.They’re hoping you might be able to decipher them.”On Rayn’s ship, the sails were unfurling.Celeste tore her eyes away from them.More cryptanalysis—this was what she needed.A stepwise problem of mathematics and linguistics.Nothing that would awaken any uncomfortable feelings or make her wish for things she couldn’t have.“I’ll have a look.”• • •Sitting in her apartment’s anteroom, Celeste leafed through the packet of letters.“These are all in the same hand.”Vitala nodded.“I noticed.Bayard seems to have had a single, highly prolific correspondent.Can you decipher them?”“Probably.” She studied the letter on the top of the pack.Like the previous letter she’d deciphered, it used more characters than were found in any single alphabet.There were a few new characters she hadn’t seen yet, but most were familiar.“There’s a good chance it’s the same cipher as the one before.”“And that means?”“That I can decipher these quickly,” she said.“I’ll be right back.” She went to her bedroom and fetched the written key she’d assembled that matched ciphertext letters to real letters.She grabbed a few sheets of blank paper, her inkpot, and her quill, and returned to the anteroom.She began by attempting a straight translation of each known ciphertext character to its real text letter.Right away, words formed under her quill.They were Mosari words, but she understood the language well enough to recognize them.Vitala leaned forward, intrigued.“It’s working,” said Celeste.“I’ll have a translation soon.” As the message began to take shape, she feared the empress would be disappointed.This was no letter between conspirators, but something more mundane.The words said nothing about assassinations.When she’d translated all the known characters, she was able to fill in the unknown ones through context.She added them to her key.“Done.” She handed the translation to Vitala.MISS YOU SO MUCH KLARA HAD A FEVER BUT IS FEELING BETTER THIS AFTERNOON THE WEATHER WAS MILD I TOOK HER OUTSIDE FOR A SHORT WHILE AND LET HER SKIP LETTERING PRACTICE NOAK DROPPED BY AND WE HAD A TALK HE SAYS HIS BUSINESS IS DOING SO WELL HES HIRED ANOTHER BOATThe letter went on for a while longer, detailing the minutiae of someone’s day.At the bottom, it was signed Stina, a Riorcan woman’s name.“Three gods,” said Vitala.“I think Bayard has a lover.”“Or a wife?” said Celeste.“They seem to have children.Or, you never know, it might be a sister and his nephews and nieces.”“If he has family, I’ve never seen them.And officially he’s a bachelor.But there’s something going on here.Miss you so much.This is not a business letter.”“I fear it’s not what you’d hoped for.”Vitala’s brow furrowed.“It’s not what I expected.But maybe we can work with it.There are a lot of names in here and some little details that might help us find this woman, wherever she is.She and Bayard are writing to each other in code—at least she’s writing to him; I assume he writes back to her, and those letters will be in her possession, if she has retained them.But if they’re using code, that suggests Bayard doesn’t want her to be discovered.”“You think she’s aware of the conspiracy?”“If she’s not, then it’s because Bayard wants to protect her and the children.Either way, we may have some leverage over him.” She smiled grimly.“Shall I translate the remaining letters?”Vitala nodded.“Please.”For several hours, Celeste deciphered letters, occasionally adding a new character to her key.All the letters used the same cipher, the one she’d broken before, and all were from Stina.They were similar in content to the first letter—routine goings-on and various milestones with the children, a lost tooth from the eldest, a new word from the youngest.There were three children, she determined: two girls and a boy.Other names were mentioned, which seemed to be those of friends and neighbors.These might be useful for tracking down the location of the family.Atella rapped at the door and poked her head inside the anteroom.“There’s a woman here to see the empress.”Vitala, who was studying translated letters and scribbling notes on a blank piece of paper, answered without raising her head.“Who is it?”“She says her name is Treva Salonius.”Vitala froze midstroke, with her quill in hand.“Empress?” asked Atella.“Are you all right?”“I’m fine.” Vitala swallowed and lifted her quill from the paper.She dipped it in the inkpot.“I don’t know any Treva Salonius.Send her away.”“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.” Atella withdrew.“Salonius is your surname,” said Celeste.“Is this Treva a relative from when you lived in Riorca?”Vitala’s mouth was a tight line.“I’ve put those days behind me.”“Don’t you want to at least find out who she is? I’m curious about her.”Vitala said nothing.Now Celeste understood.“You already know.”“Let’s stick to business,” snapped Vitala.“I’m the empress of Kjall.There’s no reason I should have to show myself to some peasant who shows up claiming a connection.She probably just wants money.”Celeste returned to the letter she was deciphering.It was unlike Vitala to react with such hostility, or to speak condescendingly of peasants.“You and I have this in common—no family remaining except Lucien and Jamien [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]