Princess Hazelyn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Three days after Hazelyn recruited Ramen, the news reached her in the castle's clock tower. She climbed the brass stairs with her gown bunched in one fist. Ramen waited at the top, his pack ticking fast. He held a torn strip of paper. "One of our coded messages got out," he said. "Ethen's enemies took it. I don't know how much they can read." Hazelyn's stomach dropped. The message named her first agent and where he would move next. If the enemy had cracked the cipher, that agent walked straight into a trap. She needed to learn what they knew, and fast. "Can you break their copy?" she asked. "No," Ramen said. "But I can watch who reads it." He tapped a gear on his strap. "Letters pass through the castle's mail drop below the great clock. If an enemy hand touches it, I'll see." They worked through the night. Ramen rigged a thin wire to the brass mail chute, weighted so it would trip when a package passed. Hazelyn crouched beside the iron pipes that ran along the wall, listening. Steam hissed through them. Her tiara knocked against a valve, and she shoved it into her pocket. A princess hiding in a chute was no princess at all. Near dawn the wire sang. A gloved hand pushed a folded message into the chute. Ramen snatched it before it dropped. He read it by the light of a glowing dial. "They have our cipher," he whispered. His cinnamon eyes went wide. "Half of it. They know the agent's name. They don't know the meeting changed to the lower gate." Hazelyn breathed out. The enemy knew enough to kill, but not enough to catch them both. "Then we move the agent to the lower gate tonight," she said. "We let their trap close on empty air." Ramen grinned. "And we feed them one more lie. Make them think the old plan still holds." He copied the enemy's message in the same hand. Hazelyn changed one line, naming the wrong hour. Ramen slid it back down the chute. They watched the gloved hand return and take the bait. Below, boots gathered at the empty meeting place long after her agent had already passed through the lower gate, safe. By morning Hazelyn stood beneath the great clock, its hands grinding above her. Her agent was alive. But she had learned something colder than relief. Her cipher was half broken, and the castle itself held an enemy who moved its mail. "We can't trust the old code anymore," she told Ramen. "We build a new one. And we find who wears that glove." Ramen nodded. "An order needs secrets no one can steal," he said. "I'll start tonight." Hazelyn pulled the tiara from her pocket and did not put it on. She had saved one agent. Now she had to protect every agent still to come.