“Next, start with M, go to I, and we get… W.”

T E M P L A R S T E M P L A R S T E

M O I U R H J B X A M G X B H B L L

T K W

I already didn’t like what we were seeing. And I was right not to. Deciphering the whole message left us with nonsense.

T E M P L A R S T E M P L A R S T E

M O I U R H J B X A M G X B H B L L

T K W F G H S J E W A R M B Q J S H

“It didn’t work,” Tom said.

I shook my head. TEMPLARS wasn’t the key.

Tom thought some more. “What about ‘treasure’?”

We tried that next.

T R E A S U R E T R E A S U R E T R

M O I U R H J B X A M G X B H B L L

T X E U Z N S X E J I G F H Q X S U

It didn’t get us anywhere, either.

I sighed. Figuring out a key was never easy. We’d just have to keep going until we found it. Tom and I tried whatever we could think of that fit the riddle. ASSASSIN. LOUISXIV. KING. Even RAVEN.

I really hoped that last one wouldn’t be the answer—and it wasn’t. All I ended up with was a similar jumble of letters that meant nothing.

“Maybe we’ve got the wrong idea,” Tom said.

“How do you mean?”

“What if it’s a different code?”

That was a possibility. If the cipher wasn’t Vigenère, then the square would never give us the answer. But it was just as possible we hadn’t figured out the right key yet. After all, the only cipher we’d used in Paris that needed a key was Vigenère—

Wait.

Maybe that’s what the hint about Paris meant. We were supposed to use the same key we’d used to solve the riddle there.

The key in Paris turned out to be RAI. Excited, I tried it.

R A I R A I R A I R A I R A I R A I

M O I U R H J B X A M G X B H B L L

V O A D R Z S B P J M Y G B Z K L D

But that didn’t work, either.

Now I was totally stumped. Further thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.

Dobson had returned. “The Marquess of Chillingham requests your company, sirs. At your earliest convenience.”

Diplomatic, our Dobson. What Lord Ashcombe had likely said was Get those two idiots here now.

“What did you do?” Tom said to me as Dobson led us through the palace.

“Nothing,” I said. “Why do you always assume everything’s my fault?”