“Long story very short,” Grayson said, “Gigi declined aninvitationfrom the Woman in Red and managed to glean that what she was being invited to was to some sort oftest. Candidates are chosen. It’s unclear exactly what happens if they say yes.”
Lyra’s mind went immediately to Avery and that note.
“What else?” Lyra asked. She knew Grayson. She knew just by looking at him that therewassomething else.
“Apparently,” Grayson said, “the group we’re after is called the Gilded Blade.”
Lyra’s gaze went back to the drawing, to the rose-handled knife, and she stated the obvious: “Wehaveto decode this.”
Opposite Grayson, Nash removed his cowboy hat. “What are you waiting for, little brother? Deal us in.”
Chapter 35
LYRA
Even with additional help, they still stalled out. There were too many numbers in play, too many ciphers that could potentially convert those numbers to letters, if they needed to be converted at all.
It was nine at night when an elegant woman wearing a cashmere sweater joined the lot of them. Lyra recognized her as Zara Hawthorne, formerly Hawthorne-Calligaris, the aunt who could supposedly hold her liquor even better than Grayson could but who nonetheless managed to give off the impression that she’d been born wearing heirloom pearls. Zara silently observed all of them for a full three minutes before speaking.
“You are making this too complicated.”
“We doubtlessly are,” Grayson agreed, “but simplifying things would require a systematic way of separating the wheat from the chaff.”
What matters, Lyra translated,from what doesn’t.As Grayson caught his aunt up to speed on their prior efforts, Lyra’s gaze went to the drawing of the rose-handled blade.The Gilded Blade.A search online for that name had turned up nothing.
“The simple version of this puzzle,” Zara said once Grayson’sexplanation was complete, “is one in which the sole purpose of the THOMAS, THOMAS file was to leadtothis page. If you assume the file has indeed served its purpose, the path forward is clear.”
“Start from scratch,” Grayson summarized. “With the patent number and only that number.” He met Lyra’s eyes and swept all the pages on the desk, all of their notes, hours and hours of work, to the floor.
Lyra bit back the growl that wanted to escape her throat. She hated spinning in circles, hated feeling like she was treading water while something dark and dangerous lurked in the shadows down below.
But instead of giving into that frustration, Lyra simply reached for a pen, uncapped it, and wrote the patent number down on a blank page from memory.
1312596375.
“There were no spaces between the digits,” Grayson told his aunt. “The sequence starts one-three, but that could just as easily signify thirteen.”
“And the simplest possible solution to that problem?” Zara prompted.
“Twenty-six letters in the alphabet,” Nash drawled. “We narrow the range of possible numbers in the code to one through twenty-six, that’d simplify things a bit.”
More than a bit, Lyra thought. She twisted the pen in her fingers. “That would give us…”
“Six and only six possible sequences,” Grayson finished. Lyra wrote them down, one after another.
1 3 1 2 5 9 6 3 7 5
1 3 12 5 9 6 3 7 5
1 3 1 25 9 6 3 7 5
13 12 5 9 6 3 7 5
13 1 2 5 9 6 3 7 5
13 1 25 9 6 3 7 5
“And the simplest cipher?” Zara said.