The Kingmakers(113)

The young woman wondered about Sanah. Her aunt. The long-lost sister of her mother. Could it be true? Adele felt a kinship with the woman, even back when they met at the play last summer. She had talked too much to her that night. Perhaps that was the natural connection of women in the same family exerting itself. Adele hoped there was a future where she might share some time with this new aunt, but the future was as clear as the grey clouds outside Edinburgh.

She was fully aware this voyage could be a trap. Sanah had admitted to being part of Mamoru's cabal. This entire thing—the journal, a fortuitous new aunt, and a mysterious assassin—could be an elaborate ruse to lure her away from Alexandria. Even knowing that, Adele had to go. If there was even the slightest chance the story was true that Gareth was in danger, and that she could protect him, there was no question. If this was indeed a plot by Mamoru, Adele pitied him once she finished with him.

The empress forced her attention to her mother's marks. She compared them to Sanah's key, laboring to make sense of it all. The same symbol could mean words or letters or thoughts, depending on how it was used. And Sanah's notes were not always clear on the differences.

Adele noted one set of symbols that appeared frequently, and on one page were written in deep dark ink, nearly etched into the paper, next to several of Mamoru's critical red comments. Clearly Pareesa was bearing down on those symbols. Adele used Sanah's code and realized with a bolt of excitement that the symbols represented the word Mamoru.

It worked. Mamoru was the Rosetta stone.

Adele laughed and began to translate the next set of symbols. It started to make sense, and her mother spoke to her from the past. Fortunately, most of the scribblings were simple observations of the Earth and its relationship with geomancy. Many of them, however, were specific responses to Mamoru's critiques, so Adele was aided in her reading by Pareesa repeating some of her teacher's comments, usually with the scorn of a scolded student. It was logical she wouldn't have wanted Mamoru to read them.

Then, on the pages regarding pathfinding, covered with her mother's sketches of spiders and webs, Pareesa's commentary grew even more scathing. She implied that Mamoru was narrow-minded, as much as the technocrats who ruled the Empire. She described her ideas that he had dismissed as pointless flights of fancy.

It wasn't sufficient, Pareesa claimed, for the geomancer to steal upon the web of the Earth and merely rest there, feeling the vibrations, and even taking pieces of the web for their own use. She believed ley lines were not rigid, but shifted over time. The geomancer's ultimate goal had to be to engage the web, maintain it, and even repair it when necessary. She poetically claimed that the geomancer had to weave new webs.

Of course, she mourned that Mamoru refused to entertain such thoughts. In his mind, the geomancer could only understand the web of the Earth to a certain level, and use its power for his own purposes. The web was a creation beyond human comprehension. To engage it on its own terms was disaster. It would crush any human vain enough to believe she could stand up to the titanic vision of the Earth.

Adele's eyes were burning and her head pounded. She prepared to put the journal aside. There would be more days ahead to work on the complex notes from her mother. She flipped to the last page and noted a single line of symbols on the inside of the back cover. It was scratched into the leather with a pen's point, not written in ink. She touched the rough symbols and read over them, slowly moving her lips.

She sat up with a jolt. Her fingers tingled. She stared at the strange symbols and repeated the translation in a low whisper, hearing the sound of her mother's voice as she did so:

Adele is the spider.

Something brushed Adele's leg and she jerked, nearly screaming. Her heart was already pounding as she caught a glance of a small furry form darting under the desk.

“Great, a rat.”

Adele took a deep breath, glanced at the symbols again, and then set the journal aside. She welcomed a more pedestrian activity at the moment. Vermin were not unusual on board a ship, but of course it had to be scuttling in her cabin. Good thing she hadn't screamed, otherwise Shirazi would have come barreling in. Only now it was left to her to kill the thing. Calling for someone else to do it seemed petty, especially for someone who killed vampires so effectively. Being squeamish over a rat didn't cry empress at all.

Adele noticed that the airship was shaking much more violently than normal. Hariri hadn't been joking about the stress of flying high. The deck jarred under her feet as Edinburgh slipped from side to side and dipped wildly.

Adele drew her Fahrenheit khukri dagger, consoling herself that at least a little activity would ward off the bitter cold seeping into her limbs and take her mind off the shuddering airship. Bracing herself, she sunk to her knees and peered under the desk.