The Lord of Misrule

Chapter 14

"Really? You have a nickname for a method of encryption?" Ami threw him a sideways glance, her lips pursed to the side. "You must be a riot with the ladies."

"It doesn't surprise me that you are woefully unaware of the magnitude of my statement," Mikael scowled. "It must be so fascinating being you, blundering through life with a glossy-eyed, vacant stare, with nothing to keep you occupied but the--"

He yelped in pain, falling back on his chair and instinctively curling his left leg up to his chest. "Will you stop kicking me!"

Ami leveled him with a bored-looking stare, her chin resting on her palm. "Get on with it, already."

The pie stall owner decided that this latest bout of childish nonsense was the last straw, and convinced them to be on their way by brandishing about a dust broom like it was Excalibur. Mikael snatched Mawsby's letter from atop the table and flashed the owner a questionable gesture, earning him a glare that could curdle milk, then began hobbling towards the marketplace, Ami in tow.

The peanut gallery tensed, unsure of the proper following distance that stalker etiquette called for. While they debated silently, Ami stopped briefly on the main road and narrowed her eyes into slits, causing them to suddenly take up an interest in the state of their shoes. When she was satisfied, she spun on her heels and caught up with Mikael.

Temporary stalls had been erected at dawn by traveling salesmen and cluttered both sides of the street, narrowing the path and making it seem busier than it otherwise should. They pushed their way through a throng of suspicious shoppers that were carefully inspecting the wares on offer, and squeezed in between slow-moving carts laden with goods from the warehouse district. Surly carters yelled at pedestrians to make way and pushy merchants latched on to anyone that was daft enough to make eye contact.

They found a wide, stone stairway that led to a raised platform which housed more shops. Mikael smoothed Mawsby's letter on its ledge and began his scrutiny once more. Ami perched herself on the ledge beside him, crossing her legs at the knees and eyeing Mikael as he continued to scrawl notes on the parchment.

"So, what's so special about this cipher? What makes it indecipherable?" Ami asked.

"As I have so magnanimously explained," he said, smiling slightly at Ami's sigh of resignation, "we can crack the Caesar cipher and random substitution ciphers by conducting frequency analysis. This particular Cipher, though, was created to also hide the frequency of the letters, so as to render conventional methods to crack it useless. It has never been broken, not for over the 100 years it has been in existence!"

Ami's jaw went slack. "Wait, so you mean after all that bluster, you're telling me that nobody can crack it?" she hissed, her voice rising sharply.

Mikael's head snapped upwards in disbelief. "What in the name of Saint Korin's crusty underpants do you mean? Have you not been paying attention to anything I've been saying?" he cried. "I just finished bragging about how I will be the first person ever to crack it!"

"Bullocks!" she yelled, jumping down from the ledge and jabbing her finger at his chest. "Are you sh--ting me? Excuse me if I don't hold my breath for some serial failure-artist to succeed in something that has never been done before!"

The commotion began to attract attention. Surprised pedestrians shot them indignant glares and grumbled under their breath as they hurried by. Ami gave the ledge a tetchy kick of her boot and turned in the other direction, stomping her way through the crowd in a huff.

Mikael watched her go in amusement, then briefly locked eyes with a housemaid wearing a scandalized look of horror from across the street.

"She's not always like that. It's her heavy days," he said, winking at her. Her expression contorted her features further, which shouldn't have been possible, before she brisk-walked her way down the street, shaking her head and clutching the cross hanging from her neck.

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Ami sloped back to the staircase half an hour later, munching on a honeyed apple and leaning her elbow casually against the stone ledge. The foot traffic had started to dissipate, as the morning breakfast rush subsided into servants running errands and loafers looking for work.

She craned her head over to where Mikael was working and cocked her eyebrow when she saw a bolded word near the bottom of the letter. It was in Mikael's handwriting, and it read:

'ELLY'

"Have you cracked it yet, oh wise Sia? Looks like you're just passing the time by making up words that don't exist." She smiled when he clucked his tongue absentmindedly, running his hand through the unruly chestnut mess atop his head.

"I'm about to make history and you're lobbing cheap street-performer jibes? Why am I not surprised?" Mikael remarked, swiping the apple from Ami's hands and taking a huge bite. She wrinkled her nose in disgust when he tried to offer it back to her, then shrugged his shoulders and chucked it behind him.

He worked fastidiously, flipping over the parchment to make more room for his notes. After a few minutes, he let out a small hoot and snatched the parchment off the ledge, holding it triumphantly above his head.

"AHA! Sheer genius has once again pierced through the murky miasma of crime and corruption!" he proclaimed loudly, spreading his arms out and gazing expectantly at the thin trickle of pedestrian bystanders. They greeted him with identical looks of contempt. Some decided to pick up the nearest object and hurl it at him.

"Shut y'er yap, you brain-addled bound'r!" someone yelled.

Mikael positioned his arms in front of him as a shield and ducked as something whizzed past his head and crashed against the stone ledge with a squelch. He glanced back to confirm that it was the remnants of an overripe tomato.

"I shouldn't have expected much from this unlettered, Philistine mob," Mikael muttered, glaring at Ami's smile. He folded the letter in his palm, stuck his quill and ink vial back into his pouch, and began walking towards the city center.

"Well, don't keep us in suspense. What's in the letter!" Mikael stiff-handed the letter over to her, scowling at anybody that would make eye contact with him. Ami took the letter with a slightly amused tilt of her eyebrow, then glanced it over, noticing that the word Mikael was forming was actually a name.

"Who is 'Ellyn'," Ami asked, pointing at the the name Mikael had circled.

"How should I know?" Mikael snapped. "She could be the death-spirit Keres, changing her name so she wouldn't be persecuted by the masses, suffering from amnesia only to shockingly discover that she has a more gentle, caring side to contrast with being the Harbinger of Violent Death."

"Getting contempt and tomatoes tossed at them is a hurdle every deluded, low-born scullion has to face," she said sagely. "Cheer up, it's not healthy to have a face like a wet weekend." She flashed him a coy grin, her eyes twinkling with mirth.

A small smile threatened to break Mikael's frown, forcing him to heave an exaggerated sigh and concede to her charm. "Ellyn is the codeword to unlock this cipher. Whoever encoded this probably wanted to impress his woman -- nothing like naming a cipher keyword after her to get the drawers to hit the floor."

Ami turned the parchment over to read the unencrypted text. The top-part of the letter, unencrypted, and without punctuation and spaces between the words, read like a list:

"LEOFRICK CREWE: TWO HUNDRED SILVER, MONTHLY. WILLING.
FAVIAN OF WYKEHAM: THREE HUNDRED SILVER, MONTHLY. WILLING.
GEOFFREY DE BOLBEC: SIXTY SILVER, TWICE MONTHLY. COERCED. NOT A DANGER, FEEBLE CONNECTIONS
EMELINE OF CLEVES: ONE HUNDRED SILVER, MONTHLY. COERCED. A WIDOW, NOT A DANGER.
JARIN DE MONTFORT: TWO HUNDRED SILVER, MONTHLY. WILLING.
HADRIAN CHAUCER: TWO HUNDRED SILVER, MONTHLY. COERCED. DANGER, STRONG CONNECTIONS, THREAT OF FAMILY EMPLOYED."

Ami whistled, exchanging a look of silent awe with Mikael.

"Wow, looks like we stumbled upon an extortion list."