The Blackthorn Key

I was hungry, too. I’d left Tom’s house so early, I hadn’t even had the chance to eat breakfast, and now we’d missed lunch, as well. I thought about raiding Hugh’s pantry, but I forced myself to stay at the desk, reading the ledger page over and over again. We still hadn’t figured out what everything in the message was for. In particular, we’d barely paid any attention to the words “end.swords” in the second line. Master Benedict wouldn’t have written that for no reason. It had to be part of the clue.


The question was how to decipher it? The period might separate the words, as it appeared. Or it could mean something else, like a starting point, or a standin for a comma or an apostrophe. It might even be nothing, a distraction to throw a would-be spy down the wrong path. End swords. Sword’s end. End’s words. Send words. Send them? Send them where?

“What’s in this?” Tom said curiously.

He held up a vial from my master’s sash. The liquid inside was clear and yellow. Unlike the others, the top was sealed with wax and bound tightly with twine. “Oil of vitriol,” I said.

“Is that like castor oil?” He began to pull at the twine.

“Don’t touch it!” I shouted.

He froze.

“That’s not something you eat,” I said. “Oil of vitriol dissolves iron.”

He blinked. “Really?”

“It also dissolves people. If you get it on you, it’ll melt your flesh.”

He jerked his fingers away from the stopper. Still, he said, “Can we try it on something?”

“If you want.” I stared out the window, trying to think. Hugh’s bedroom, four floors up, was a story taller than the townhouses that faced it, giving him a nice view of the city. I could even see right into the forest green of a private garden nestled off an alleyway two streets over.

And there was a pigeon sitting on the windowsill.

“What the . . . ?” I began.

Tom looked up.

“It’s Bridget,” I said, amazed.

She bobbed her head and pecked at the glass.

“She followed us here?” Tom said. “What do you feed that bird?”

I unlatched the window. It was hinged at the top, swinging outward, so it began to push her off the sill. She flapped her wings accusingly.

“I can’t open it unless you move,” I said. Then I stopped.

I grabbed the ledger page. I reread my master’s message. My heart was pounding.

Hugh’s 4th below the lions the gates of paradise “Is something wrong?” Tom said.

“I . . . I think I know where Hugh’s fourth is.”

“Where?”

“Here,” I said. “Right here. We’re standing in it.”

“Hugh’s bedroom?”

“What floor are we on?”

Tom counted. “The fourth.” He looked surprised. “Hugh’s, fourth. But how do you know that’s the right answer?”

I pointed out the window. “Look.”

Bridget tried to stick her head through the crack at the bottom of the frame. Tom followed my stare past her to the private garden beyond. It was walled off from the alley by a gate with pillars of stone, linked together by an iron fence. On top of the pillars were two statues, facing away from us. Their tails curved around the base.

Tom looked at me quizzically. I pushed the ledger paper over to him. He read it, then looked back at the garden. His eyes widened. “The statues.”

I nodded. “They’re lions.”





CHAPTER


19


I STOPPED SHORT WHEN I rounded the corner. I stared at the brick wall that blocked our way. Again.

“We should’ve turned left,” Tom said.

I looked back the way we came, seeing nothing but more brick. “Left would take us to the street.”

“No, right is the street. Left is the houses.”

“This place is a maze,” I said.

“I think that’s the point.”

It sure seemed to be. We’d left Hugh’s house and made our way to the alley that led to the statues of the lions. We should have been in a nice straight path to the private garden. Instead, someone had laid a confounding pattern of walls between the houses, fifteen feet high, complete with sharp turns and dead ends. There were iron spikes set in the top of the walls, to stop anyone from climbing over. “This thing has more twists than a pretzel.”

“What’s a pretzel?” Tom said.

“It’s a kind of dough the cook at the orphanage made. You dip it in butter and—it doesn’t matter. We go right.”

“It’s left,” Tom said.

“It’s right.”

Bridget flapped by overhead, going left. Tom glared at me.