The King's Woman

Chapter Four

Andrea's POV

We went straight to the dining room, where Merlin and Eggsy were waiting for us, staring out of the window, obviously ill at ease. Harry took his place and put the envelope on the table. With a motion of his hand he invited us all to sit. He took the envelope, stared at it for a minute, in perfect silence, and passed it to me. I opened the envelope, only to find a tiny scrap of paper, with a riddle written on it in cursive:

"What king can you make if you take:
the head of a lamb
the middle of a pig
the hind of a buffalo
and the tail of a dragon?"

I passed it on to Harry, and he finally broke the silence.  

-An actual riddle?! He wasn't kidding.. What kind of sick game is this?   

-One for supremacy. To prove he's better than us. He put it in our hands to stop whatever he's doing and if we fail, it will be on us.   

-For not solving a bloody riddle?!  

-Yes, Eggsy. So I suggest we suck it up and solve this, ok?  

-I can come up with an algorithm, maybe it will..   

-Merlin, no offense but I think we shall manage better technology free. Didn't you guys solve riddles as kids? Really?!  

-Childhood's been a while ago..  

-No, Harry, I won't have that. Let's focus, ok. Someone pass me some paper.. Ok, so. A king.. does he mean like the name of a king? Or maybe the name of someone linked to Kingsman..   

-He picked the king reference on purpose! Just to get at me. 

-And he'll succeed if you let him. Pull yourself together!   

-Harsh! Ok.. let's suppose you get the name of a king but let's see the rest of the riddle..   

-Head of a lamb, middle of a pig.. I'm sure it doesn't mean literally the body parts. May it be..   

-A word game! You guys, this is brilliant.  

-Care to enlighten us?  

-Middle of a pig did the trick. Think of it! Middle not as in the body's middle but..  

-The middle of the word!    

-Precisely!  

-So that is an I.. the exact middle of the word pig..  

-Now onto the others. Head of the lamb.. that's first letter, isn't it? L. 

-Yes. So, L-I-    

-Umm.. tail of the dragon must be last letter, but how about the hind of a buffalo?  

-So that is a N.. it makes L-I---N.. a king..   

-It is a king! Hind also means the last letter of buffalo because we get..

-A lion, as in the king of the jungle! Ok, we solved this but what now?  

-Lion? This has to be linked to some person maybe..  

-Or a place?    

-Shall we ask Mr Vale himself? I have recovered his phone number for you. You can thank me later.   

-Merlin, you are a genius. Give me that phone.. 

-Mr Hart! I must confess I am impressed. Did you solve my little riddle? 

-We have.    

-Good, good. I expected you to. Next clue, it is a place in London. I'm very kind giving you all these clues, Mr Hart. Next time I won't be. If you figure this out, I'll have more difficult tasks for you, but now you simply must stop this bomb. Au revoir !