The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves #1)(39)
Enrique paused. An idea flying to his head.
“But numbers and letters have plenty in common…” he said slowly. “Mathematics and the Torah led to gematria, a Kabbalistic method of interpreting Hebrew scripture by assigning numerical value to the words.”
Zofia sat upright. “My grandfather used to give us riddles like that. How do you know about that?”
“It’s been around for some time,” said Enrique, feeling his academic tone creeping into his voice. He had a bizarre urge to sit in a leather chair and acquire a fluffy cat. And a pipe. “Mathematics has long been considered the language of the divine. Besides, the system of alphanumeric codes doesn’t just belong to the Hebrew language. Arabs did it with abjad numerals.”
“Our zeyde taught my sister and I how to write coded letters to each other,” said Zofia softly. She twirled a strand of platinum hair around her finger. “Every number matched its alphanumeric position on the alphabet. It was … fun.”
At this, the barest smile touched her face. Not once had he ever heard her talk about her family. But no sooner had she mentioned them than she set her jaw. Before he could say anything, Zofia grabbed a quill and scraps of paper.
“If I take all these letters from your Sator Square, and look at their position in the alphabet and add them up, here’s what we get.”
S A T O R ? S + A + T + O + R = 19 + 1 + 20 + 15 + 18 = 73
A R E P O ? A + R + E + P + O = 1 + 18 + 5 + 16 + 15 = 55
T E N E T ? T + E + N + E + T = 20 + 5 + 14 + 5 + 20 = 64
O P E R A ? O + P + E + R + A = 15 + 16 + 5 + 18 + 1 = 55
R O T A S ? R + O + T + A + S = 18 + 15 + 20 + 1 + 19 = 73
“That hardly looks helpful.”
Zofia frowned. “Separate the numbers. The first line is seventy-three. Seven plus three is ten. Move to the next line. Five and five is ten. Each of them becomes ten when treated as a separate integer. Or, perhaps it is not ten. Perhaps it is just one and zero. See?”
“It’s like the I Ching,” said Enrique, impressed. “The movement of zero to one is the power of divinity. Ex nihilo and all that. That would fit if there’s a piece of verit inside this square because the stone was believed to examine the soul, the way a deity might. But that doesn’t give us a hint to how to open the box itself. Plus, do the letters look like they’re … sliding?”
Zofia held up the metal square, tilting it back and forth. She pressed the letter S and moved her finger. It dragged a couple spaces to the right.
For the next hour, Enrique and Zofia copied out the letters on at least twenty different sheets of paper before cutting them up, and trying to arrange them as they went. Every now and then, his gaze darted to her face. As she worked, Zofia’s brows were pressed down, her mouth slanted in a grimace. In the past year or so that she’d worked for Séverin, Enrique had never spent much time with Zofia. She was always too quiet or too cutting. She rarely laughed and scowled more than she smiled. Watching her now, Enrique was beginning to think she wasn’t really scowling … maybe this was just the face she made when thinking … as if everything was an exercise in computation. And here, with the numbers and the riddle before them, it was like watching her come alive.
“Language of the divine, language of the divine,” muttered Enrique over and over to himself. “But how does it want to be arranged? I see A and O which could theoretically be said to represent the alpha and omega power of God. Those are, coincidentally, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, said to suggest that God is first and last.”
“Then take out the two As and two Os,” said Zofia. “Wouldn’t it make sense if it stood apart?”
Enrique did as she suggested. Maybe it was the light in the room or the fact that his eyes were strangely unfocused in exhaustion, but he thought of home as he muttered a quick prayer. He thought of kneeling with his mother, father, Lola, and brothers in the church pews, heads bowed as the priest recited the Lord’s Prayer in Latin: Pater Noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum …
“Pater Noster,” breathed Enrique, his eyes flying open. “That’s it. ‘Our Father’ in Latin.”
His eyes skipped over the arrangement of letters, hands moving furiously as he moved the bits of paper into a cross:
“Zofia,” he said. “I think I know how to use it.”
He took the metal disc from her, then dragged the letters into the PATER NOSTER formation, with the As and Os placed outside of the cross. The square split down the middle, and a ghostly light shimmered before them. Zofia reeled back as the top half of the brass square slid away, revealing four gravel-sized pieces of verit stone that could ransom a kingdom.
12
SéVERIN
Séverin was ten years old when he was brought to his third father, Envy. Envy took them in after Wrath accidentally drank tea steeped with wolfsbane. It was not a peaceful death. Séverin knew, for he had watched.
Envy had a wife named Clotilde, and two children whose names Séverin no longer remembered. On the first day with Envy, Séverin fell in love. He loved the charming whitewashed house and the charming children who were the same age as Tristan and him. When the men in suits and hats had dropped them before the house, Clotilde had told them, charmingly, of course, “Call me Mama.” When she said that, his throat burned. He wanted to say that word so badly his teeth hurt.