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“Something hidden inside its heart.”
    â€œYes, yes,” Terence said, taking it now from Lily. “I can see the faint design on both sides of the stone and a series of very tiny, even infinitesimal, separations that could mean that the stone somehow opens up. It is far too heavy to be a normal stone.”
    Passing it around, they gently tried to coax the stone to reveal its secret, but short of prying it open and maybe busting it, they couldn’t find a way. Vela told them nothing.
    â€œHave you considered that it’s fairly dangerous to be lugging this around with you?” Julian said. “There are vaults in the city that are pretty near uncrackable, even by the Order.”
    Roald nodded. “A good idea, I agree. But the legend says ‘the first will circle to the last,’ meaning that something about Vela is a clue to the next relic or maybe its Guardian. We need to discover something soon or we won’t know where to look.”
    â€œThere’s also this.” Becca slid her hand into her shoulder bag and tugged out the cracked hilt of the Magellan dagger. “The handle cracked when I . . . you know. I’m sorry . . .”
    â€œI’m so glad you did,” Lily said, shuddering to see the hilt again. “It was, well . . .” She was going to say that what Becca had done—stabbing the goon on the bridge and saving her life—was something so beyond amazing, but she felt suddenly on the verge of tears, which she never was, so instead she just closed her mouth, which was also pretty rare, and smiled like a dope at whoever, which turned out to be Wade, who, as usual, was staring at Becca with his googly eyes.
    â€œThat’s quite something,” Julian said, drawing in a quiet breath when Becca set the hilt on the table. “Italian, by any chance?”
    â€œBolognese,” said Wade, finally tearing his eyes from Becca.
    â€œYes, yes.” Julian picked it up gently, but it suddenly separated into two pieces of carved ivory and fell back on the table. “Ack! I’m sorry!”
    â€œHold on . . .” Lily used her slender fingers to tug something out from inside the hilt. It was a long, narrow ribbon. “What is this?”
    Terence stood. “Oh, ho!” He pinched one end of the ribbon and held it up. It dangled about three feet.
    â€œMicroscope!” said Julian. He snatched the ribbon from his father, then jerked away from the table to the far end of the room, where he sat at a small table. Not ten seconds later, he said, “Dad, we’ve seen this kind of thing before.”
    They all rushed over to Julian in a flash, but Lily pushed her way through the crowd to be the first one leaning over the lens. “Letters,” she said. “I see letters. They’re pretty faded, but they’re there, written one under the other the whole length of the ribbon.”
    Darrell moved in next. “ T-O-E-G-S-K , and a bunch more. We’ve done word scrambles and substitution codes. Is this one of those? They look random.”
    Terence took his own look and smiled. “Not random at all, actually. These letters are one half of a cipher called a scytale .” He pronounced the word as if it rhymed with Italy .
    â€œInvented by the ancient Spartans, the cipher consists of two parts: a ribbon made of cloth or leather with letters on it, and a wooden staff,” he continued. “The staff has a number of flat sides on it, rather like a pencil. You wrap the ribbon around the staff like a candy cane stripe, and if the staff is the right size, the letters line up in words.”
    Julian grinned. “The trick is that you always have to keep the ribbon separate from the staff until it’s time to decode the message.” He paused and looked at his father. “Dad, are you thinking what I’m thinking? Two birds?”
    â€œTwo birds?” said Wade. “Is that code