The Key

13

Room 406, Davlat Hastenesi Hospital

Kathryn Mann stared at the object that had just slipped out of the evidence bag on to the hospital bed.

Arkadian had not stayed long. The memory of the last time they had met had hung too heavy over both of them, so he had made his peace offering and left.

‘We found it among your father’s things,’ he had told her. ‘There’s a message for you in there. I thought you should see it.’

Inside the evidence bag she had found a book, bound in leather with a thong wrapped round a button on the cover to keep it closed. Just seeing it had misted her eyes. It was the same old-fashioned make of journal her father had always used. She reached to the bedside table to retrieve her reading glasses then carefully unwound the thong to loosen the cover and found the note written across the middle two pages in her father’s neat hand: My dearest Kathryn, My love and light. I believe my work is over now and my return to Ruin will be for good this time. I hope I am wrong, but suspect I am not. No matter. I have lived long and you have filled those years with warmth and joy. If I do live, I will keep my promise and show you the next step, as I always said I would. If not, then you must discover it for yourself and decide whether to forgive me. Know only that what I kept from you I did for your sake, and for the safety of my grandson. Kiss Gabriel for me, and light a candle to my name so I may talk to you still. All my love, for now and always, Oscar de la Cruz

Every other page was empty. She reread his note, looking to see if she had missed something, but it remained as opaque as the first time she had read it. What had he kept from her? She had always thought they shared everything, that there were no secrets between them; only now, in death, had she discovered this was not so.

She remembered how, even when she was a small child, he had shared confidences with her, explaining that they were different from other people, that they were descendants of the Mala, the oldest tribe on earth, usurped by another who had sought to destroy them and bury the knowledge they kept. He had shown her their secret symbols, taught her the Mala language and revealed the mission they shared to restore rightful order to the world. But he had kept something from her so important that he had felt compelled to confess it from beyond the grave. Maybe she hadn’t known him as well as she’d thought.

Even the note contained something that jarred with her memory of him. He had always been so particular about words, insisting on precision because they carried the most precious cargo of all — meaning. And yet here was a mistake: he had not asked her to light a candle ‘in’ his name, but ‘to’ it.

Then she realized.

It wasn’t a mistake at all.

When she was a girl he had also taught her how their ancestors had kept their secrets. One method was to record messages on paper using lemon juice instead of ink. When the juice dried it was invisible, but the acids affected the paper so that a flame held against it would darken these sections first and reveal the hidden words on the page. When Oscar had written that he wanted her to light a candle ‘to’ his name so he might talk to her still, he had meant precisely that.

There was another message in the space beneath his signature. All she needed to read it was a flame.