Aurelia Corvus's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Aurelia Corvus had cracked every cipher in Bellstorm but this one. She stood at her desk in the bureau, the enemy's message spread flat under the lamp. Somewhere in those coded letters sat the name of the traitor inside her own intelligence ranks. She lifted the clockwork pendant at her throat, the Cameo Cypher, and fed the message through its gears. The pendant clicked, stalled, and stopped. Every code in the city ran through this device. This code did not. The traitor's name stayed locked. She had built the Cameo Cypher with her own hands, years ago, before she took this post. It read any key she knew. But the enemy used a key she had never seen. She turned the pendant twice more. Nothing moved. The letters stared back, meaningless. The canister sat beside the message, dark gold and ringed with gears, the vessel that had carried the enemy's cipher into her hands. She had captured it three days ago. Three days, and she was no closer. Whoever wrote the key was still walking her halls, reading her reports. She sent for Lin Su. The detective arrived within the hour, her clockwork magnifying glass already in hand. Lin Su ran her own agency and trusted no one's easy answers, which was why Aurelia trusted her. They had worked cases the police buried. "The pendant can't read it," Aurelia said. "I need what you read." Lin Su set the glass over the message. The lens turned, reading heat and chemical traces in the ink. She was quiet a long time. "Two inks," she said. "The letters are one ink. The gaps between words are another. Fainter." Aurelia leaned in. "The key is hidden in the spacing." "The spacing is the key," Lin Su said. She marked each faint stroke. Aurelia copied the pattern into the Cameo Cypher, gear by gear. The pendant caught. It turned. It kept turning. The letters shifted into words. Aurelia read the decoded message once, then again, to be sure. The traitor was Batinah El-Amin. Aurelia set the paper down slowly. Batinah, the archivist. Her friend. The woman who carried the confidential files, who had eaten at her table, who knew her better than anyone in the city. One person in Bellstorm knew Aurelia well enough to ruin her. She had kept that person close on purpose. "You know her," Lin Su said. Not a question. "I know her," Aurelia said. Lin Su gathered her glass. "Then she knows you." Aurelia looked at the name on the page. If the message was true, Batinah had been reading her reports for months. If it was false, someone had spent great effort to point her at a friend. Either way, the enemy knew Aurelia would crack the key eventually. They had chosen this name for her to find. She folded the message and slid it into her coat. She would go to Batinah herself. Tonight.