“How long to translate Idia’s story?” Patrick asked her. “It must be comin’ next.”
“I don’t know,” she said despairingly. “Weeks, maybe.” But she looked as though she wouldn’t last another day.
John scoffed. “Weeks!” A cruel smile twisted onto his face. “Then you best forgo sleep and pray for a miracle, darlin’, because that ship of yours only comes round once a year off our shores, and it’ll anchor down in a fortnight.”
Polly’s head shook, fervor returning to her eyes. She gripped the fringes ofher coiled hair between her knuckles. “There are too many symbols I don’t know. Too many gaps to make sense of the rest! It’s slowing me.”
“It’s all right, Pol” came Theo’s feeble voice. “There isn’t a more talented Scribbler anywhere. You’ll find a way.”
But Polly was biting her thumbnail, pacing around the room. “I need a bloody cypher. I’m just stumbling through without it.”
Patrick sighed. “And if you had it, how quickly could you translate?”
She concentrated for a moment. “Hours,” she said. “Only a good few hours.”
“Well,” said John, “your luck ends here, Scribbler. We ain’t got a cypher between us.”
“But your grandfather had one,” Patrick said to Polly. “You said he taught you Verian Script with it.”
She nodded.
“And he died here in Lavnonshire?” Patrick asked.
Polly’s lips thinned. “He… did.” She seemed to know where the line of questioning was headed.
“And who would have been charged with his possessions after he died?” Patrick asked. “Who would have donated his books to the archives?”
Her brow twitched. She hesitated before answering. “My parents.”
“Locals, I’d bet.”
Polly nodded stiffly.
Patrick exhaled in a gust and pulled his coin from his pocket. “Then you’ll be payin’ old Ma and Dad a visit.”
Immediately, Polly shook her head. “That—it isn’t possible.”
“Sure it is,” said John, teeth glinting in the thicket of his beard. His energy seemed restored. “Call on ’em for a spot of tea.”
“You don’t understand. They’ve forbidden me to return home,” she said. “I’m the very last person they’ll help, and not especially with anything that pertains to the Stewards.”
There was shame in her now, weighing down her posture.
“Let me be clear,” Patrick told her. And he flipped the coin over again,watching the face turn tails to heads. Canary to lord. “If it’s not you goin’ in to find that cypher, then it’s me.”
It was threat enough. Polly’s eyes drifted shut. “All right,” she said. “I’ll need different clothing.”
Patrick paused in the act of turning away, his eyes skimming over Polly’s form with little interest. “Nothin’ wrong with what you’re wearin’.”
“I look like a Craftswoman,” she said, her voice extinguishing at its end. “My father… won’t like that.”
Patrick sighed. “Then find yourself somethin’ suitable from downstairs,” he said, stalking down the hallway to his room. “We’re leavin’ now.”
I stepped forward. “I—”
“Don’t bother,” Patrick called over his shoulder. “You’re stayin’ here.”
I gritted my teeth.
