Chapter 6: Don’t Take One’s Spot

I looked to Nine, and together, we walked out of the main entrance. She was a little bit behind me, just as when I had entered. When we made it around a bend, I stopped and turned to her. "Did you prepare the materials I asked for?"

She gave me the smallest of smiles. The faintest twitch of her lips completely changed her face from the serene mask that I had always seen on her, and a bit of the ice melted. "Of course, Master. It's all in your study."

Nine paused, and the slightest shift of her jaw told me she was chewing on her cheek. A nervous tick? After a second, she continued with the same small smile. "But I must say that was impressive. Gerald is no slouch with the blade."

I frowned, thinking back to what the crazed man had said to me. What had I done to make him so mad? Something didn't feel right about who I was. Everyone was afraid of me for some reason. Even Nine was afraid of me. Yet strangely loyal, as far as I can tell. They didn't expect any violence from me or anything brutish.

Still, I couldn't dodge the knowledge that something was clearly wrong. I needed to figure out what that was soon before anyone figured out I wasn't who I appeared to be. I just smiled at her compliment. "I just got lucky."

"No, Master, that was not luck. You are terrifying." The chewing on the cheek returned.

"How so?" I asked. I realized I just assumed that everyone knew what had happened in the maze. I also didn’t miss her use of present tense. But how would that work? What exactly did they all see?

"When you just sat there and watched the floor. Oh, I don't think I would have had the courage to do that. The amount of pain. If you messed up and he got you, I would not be worth it."

I blinked. Huh? Maybe those daggers are a bit worse than I feared. After I did not say something for a while, she continued.

"I have no idea how you saw him coming, though. It was very impressive," she said, and something changed in her eyes, the way she looked at me, and she looked at my hands as if recalling some memory. But the look soon faded, and she turned. "Come on. If you really want to review everything today, we probably better get started."

As we walked, I slightly fell behind to follow her lead, and she took me down a couple hallways and up a flight of stairs in a small, nondescript room. She opened a plain wooden door with the name Grand Master C. E. on it.

I could tell this was my study as the room smelled like me. It was an odd sensation, like coming home. When you breathe in, and just know this is where you spent most of your time. And when I settled into the chair behind my desk, it just felt right.

She gestured to the stack of papers several feet high on my desk. "I think that's everything you asked for. Now, should I have the kitchen send up lunch for you, or will you be heading down yourself when it comes to getting it?"

"No, send it up," I said while looking down at the papers.

"Is there anything else you'll need?"

"No," I said, "just have them send something up. Thank you. I'll see you after lunch."

For the first time, I saw a real visceral reaction on her face. Fear flashed as her eyes went wide, and she waved, her hands crossing repeatedly in front of her. "No, no, no, no, I can't take One's slot. No, Master, I can't."

"What?" I said, looking up from the stack of papers at the very flustered, deadly woman.

"It's One's turn. I'll- I'll see you tomorrow. Maybe. But I'll have the kitchen send up the meal. And if there's anything else you need?" She started back through the door. Interesting, I thought. Clearly, this was something I wasn't going to be able to ask about, but it was interesting that there was someone she was more afraid of than me. Who was One? I imagine I would have to meet One soon. I decided to leave it and just gestured for her to shut the door as she left.

The first thing on top was the membership roster of the organization, and I couldn't read it. Not that I couldn't read the letters, but I could see the positions and the titles. However, the names next to them were just scrambled bits of letters.

It's encoded, I thought, rubbing my head in frustration. I searched my nonexistent memory for anything about encoding and encryption and realized that I knew next to nothing. Maybe my body used to, but this was not a skill that transferred over.

Still, I read through the roster. At least I could see the titles and positions. That should help me blend in a bit. I could see there was my position, the Master, and then the Deputy Master, as well as a list of Blades and Handles. In the second column, there were various other positions that seemed to be things like a quartermaster and sort of head of the house, and then also more basic positions like groundskeeper and maids, as well as the ten recruits I had met earlier.

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They were just listed as potentials. Had I given myself away by calling them recruits when that wasn't the right title? Everyone seemed to know what I was saying, so. I shrugged. Nothing I could do about it now.

So I moved on. I picked up the next paper in the stack and scanned it. It looked to be like a contract, but again, the owner of the contract, the execution, and all the details were in the code. Just the fact that it was a contract was the only thing that I could make out about it.

Skimming through the pile, I found that almost anything that would be useful information was encoded. I did notice that I could tell which contracts had been completed, which ones had been accepted, and which ones were proposed. I based that off of the number of stamps they had in the corner. It looked like this was a long history of assassinations. There were only a few open contracts and a lot of closed contracts.

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be reviewing them, but I pushed them off to one side, organizing them. I did my best to simply sort through the stack of pile paper, organizing them into separate piles so that I would be able to go through it later when I could read the code. A few of the more interesting pieces of information I left on one side to be first studied as soon as I could.

The first was all the open contracts and our accounts. The numbers weren't encoded, but the purposes were. We were sitting on an awfully large number of gold. I assumed at least it was a lot. I didn't actually know the relative worth of gold. But with the number of zeros at the end, it was a hefty amount. Seeing each change in the value, I assumed that each contract was quite expensive as well. Apparently, death was lucrative.

The pile didn't take as long for me to sort through as I had feared. It was well organized; each section of papers was set at an off angle, so it was easy to categorize them. The paper was a thicker sort than I had first assumed, which made the pile, while intimidatingly tall, not nearly as dense with information as it could have been. The fact that I assumed the paper was thinner was an interesting assumption. I wondered why I thought that.

Still, once I had finished sorting, I found I didn't have much to do. I could conceivably work on breaking the cipher, but I needed to find some spare paper and a pen to work on that for a bit. If anyone found that, it would be a little bit suspicious. It would be better if I could find a code book or something.

Standing up from the chair, I stretched and examined the small room, trying to see if there was anything I could use around there. In one corner was a small fireplace with a couple of logs and some tinder inside it and a poker hung next to the brick. There were a couple of small chairs and a rug in front of the desk where all the papers were piled, and in the opposite corner from the fireplace sat a hat stand.

A small set of drawers and shelves were off to the other side that made up the entirety of the small room. It wasn't cramped by any means, but simple, cozy, and not at all ostentatious. There was limited decoration and filigree in any of the furniture, despite the fact that I realized we could clearly afford it.

After trying several different combinations of shifting letters around, I gave up on trying to break the code. Even if I used C. E. as the initials of the headmaster position, I made no progress. Leaning back in the chair, I glared at the desk in frustration. After a few moments, I took a deep breath, forced myself to relax a bit, and looked around.

Then I realized there were several drawers on each side of the desk. I started shifting through them. The one immediately underneath simply held some writing instruments and blank pieces of paper, but the three drawers on either side were all locked.

I searched for a key somewhere. I didn't have any on me and didn't remember grabbing or seeing any in my bedroom. But I frowned, remembering a set of thin metal instruments. I had slipped into a pouch from my waist. They weren't made for poisons. I realized they were lockpicks. Huh? Did I just have to pick my own locks all the time?

I knelt down in front of one lock and looked at the set of lock picks laid out in front of me. Again, I had no idea how to use them. Picking up one that had a wavy pattern in it, I stuck it inside the lock and wiggled it around. I heard some clicking noises, but it didn't really mean anything to me. I tried twisting as I wiggled them around, and nothing really happened. I noticed the thing was flexing, and it was catching and binding. So I took a second pick, this time with a little curve at the end, and stuck it in the lock and twisted that while I raked back and forth.

The lockpick bent in the lock started to turn, but the pick then broke off at the handle, and I cursed as I fished with my fingers, trying to pull out the broken pick. Huh. That probably wasn't how it was supposed to be done. I muttered to myself and looked through the little piece of cloth that I had rolled out on the floor.

I found a sturdier piece of metal that was simply an L shape, stuck that in the lock, and applied some pressure. This time, it bent less and could take more force. I applied enough to turn a normal local and continued randomly poking at the lock with the other bit of metal. It took an embarrassingly long amount of time before suddenly the lock sprang open.

Easing my slightly cramped fingers, I slowly slid open the drawer carefully. My caution was proven warranted as a needle shot out at the top of the drawer. If I had yanked it open, that definitely would have sunk into my hand. Judging based on the slightly greenish tinge on it, I doubted I would have liked the results.

It was weird that the lockpicking skill that my previous owner of this body must have had didn't transfer over like the fighting skills. Perhaps it was less of a muscle memory thing and more of an intellectual ability, then. I looked at the drawer and found nothing but a small leather-bound red book. I grabbed it excitedly. Was this the code book? That'd be too lucky. I flipped it open on the floor as I knelt in front of the drawer and looked in it.

It wasn't the code book, but it was useful. It looked like I actually did keep a schedule. Just as I was reading today's entry, a knock came from the door. Hurriedly, I stood up and closed the book before putting it on the desk.