September 15th, 973
Wülfgang gazed his new companions sitting across from him at the table. Silence greeted him. Terrible silence. Praying silently to the God Hughes, he intoned the necessary cadence in a questioning manner. . .
“Bueller…?”
“Bueller…?”
Nothing. Unless you counted that burp from his left and the incessant scritch-scritch-scritch coming from under the table. One of these folks probably had crabs. . . Maybe two from the looks of them.
Mmmm crabs… Hulking Crab Cakes with just a kiss of lemon…
Shaking his head, he returned to the task at hand.
Where was that Pfinder chap anway? Or even Cassyndra? They seemed rather bright and interested in cracking codes…
Nowhere to be found. OK, then, let’s tackle this with the tools at hand.
Unfolding his parchment, he began to cross out all of the prime numbers in the seventh encrypted letter.
After that, he went through the letter again and carefully inscribed a letter above each known number. A for 27, E for 32, and so on. Now, it was just a matter of looking for patterns with the numbers. He started by looking for repeating three-number combination those could be THE or AND…
Mumbling to himself, he worked on through the night and most of the next day, only getting up to get more food and ale (with the occasional trip to the alleyway to relieve himself).
His companions would come and go… mostly go, as he burned through the night and into the next day.
“See!” He shouted once in the night. “I see several ‘10 20’ combos. Could be TH!”
“S is 38!!! P is 24!!”
“Lord Kanwal Gill! Man of Pleasure! Wait. . . No, that’s not right. . . Leisure! It’s Leisure!”
Eventually, this was the letter he solved. . .
Emile,
Do you remember that officer in academy who threw a garden party in the middle of mid-winter drills? The one who managed to charm the instructor into forgiving a two-day absence by quoting poetry and offering elderberry wine?
That man has, improbably, been promoted. His name is Lord Kanwal, though he prefers—and insists—on being addressed as “The Man of Leisure.” Yes, officially. It’s stitched on his dressing gown, which he wears. To meetings.
This is the Governor of Cambria. I visited his estate yesterday to brief him on the escalating unrest, the magical plague, the undead reports, and the minor matter of rising peasant insurrection. He was in the garden. In his pajamas. Attempting to train a peacock to fetch playing cards.
The briefing lasted exactly nine minutes. He nodded gravely through the entire thing, sipping a cordial and murmuring “Terrible, terrible” at irregular intervals. When I finished, he declared he would “assemble a committee to look into the question of localized enthusiasm deficits among the working classes.” I believe he meant the rebellion. He then asked whether I thought zombies could be taught to serve wine.
I wish I were exaggerating.
The worst part: he’s likeable, Emile. You want to like him. He tells amusing stories, remembers birthdays, once offered to write a letter of recommendation for a conscript’s dog. But he’s incapable of governing. He signs edicts with a quill dipped in brandy and recently abolished a salt tax by accident while trying to ban his neighbor’s rooster.
There are forces at work in Cambria that would give a hardened tactician pause. Instead we have Lord Kanwal, humming operettas while the province rots underneath his slippers.
If there’s anyone at the Ministry who thinks this man was appointed to manage Cambria, they are mad. If they appointed him to lose it, well—he’s doing splendidly.
Please find out who installed him. And why. And whether we might convince them to uninstall him. Politely, if possible. Less politely, if not.
Yours in mounting disbelief,
A