the written word.

[ipseite]

FORM: Book.
SENDER: Petrana de Cedoux.
RECIPIENT: Everyone in range.

If you speak or write a language besides common trade fluently, I would like to speak with you. Preference shall be for both spoken fluency and literacy, but this is not required; one or other is acceptable. There are no limits upon languages in which I am interested.

MME DE CEDOUX
chief cryptographer

Comments

[ipseite]

I did, ( a neat, prompt answer given by a woman not uneasy in meeting his gaze. ) As my tools I used an enchantment I had known only theoretically beforehand, and Atticus Vedici who was at that time imprisoned alongside his apprentice.

( he was often, in and out of his hearing, still given the title of magister. that she did not do so then and does not now was and remains a deliberate choice. he is no more a magister in the inquisition's custody than is artemaeus an altus: they are prisoners of war at best and property at worst. encouraging either vedici or those around him to see him as yet holding power had seemed unwise, whatever else she had thought of him.

in the here and now, )

I am happy to demonstrate it for you, if you like. I studied it when I was building what would later be the bones of the first published tome of magic in Lamorre, though I did not envision using it myself in a dungeon in another world.

[katabasis]

No, that's quite all right. [Followed instantly by:] What did it do to Vedici?

[ipseite]

Obliged him to tediously translate a piece of text for an hour or so in company, ( she says, wry, ) but otherwise, I suppose nothing. What I took from him was—I suppose 'shared' is a better way of describing it. He lost nothing in the process. From where he was sat, the primary difference between his use in my enchantment and what I propose to study here was how near I sat and that he took dictation.

[katabasis]

[Flint regards her for a single studious beat, then carefully slides his attention back to the passages before him. He begins sorting them without much thought - this bit of essay with that excerpt of the Chant, that letter with this cargo manifest, and so on.]

Have you seen much of coded Tevene?

[ipseite]

Less than I might wish, ( is wry, a little, in a muted sort of way; would that they had intercepted more venatori correspondence, frankly. it isn't none because handling coded information is quite literally her job, but probably if they'd had as much as she might like then the war would have been won already. ) I am increasingly familiar; I must bear in mind the habits we might observe from what we've pilfered in my own work.

[katabasis]

[From behind the desk, he makes some small 'hm' of acknowledgement. It's the sort of sound a man makes when his attention is divided elsewhere, fitting with his review of the papers before him.

Then suddenly, he is on his feet and passing without explanation into the apartment adjacent to the office. The door is left open, affording some narrow bar of the room which exists beyond it: a chair with some sturdy quilt thrown over it, the edge of a dark rug. There is a thump, the sound of things being shifted, and when Flint reappears he is in possession of a thick stack of letters.]

These were recovered from the private collection of a Venatori agent. My best guess is that the key is some reference text - they're certainly no code I'm familiar with -, but if you believe they might be useful to you, then you're welcome to them.