Legion by Brandon Sanderson Page B

private investigators. We don’t do surveillance.”
    Ivy walked through the room, not sitting down. She strolled around the young man’s chair, inspecting him.
    “I know,” the boy said quickly. “I just . . . well, she’s vanished, you see.”
    Tobias perked up. He likes a good mystery.
    “He’s not telling us everything,” Ivy said, arms folded, one finger tapping her other arm.
    “You sure?” I asked.
    “Oh, yes,” the boy said, assuming I’d spoken to him. “She’s gone, though she did leave this note.” He unfolded it and set it on the table. “The really strange thing is, I think there might be some kind of cipher to it. Look at these words. They don’t make sense.”
    I picked up the paper, scanning the words he indicated. They were on the back of the sheet, scrawled quickly, like a list of notes. The same paper had later been used as a farewell letter from the fiancée. I showed it to Tobias.
    “That’s Plato,” he said, pointing to the notes on the back. “Each is a quote from the Phaedrus . Ah, Plato. Remarkable man, you know. Few people are aware that he was actually a slave at one point, sold on the market by a tyrant who disagreed with his politics—that and the turning of the tyrant’s brother into a disciple. Fortunately, Plato was purchased by someone familiar with his work, an admirer you might say, who freed him. It does pay to have loving fans, even in ancient Greece . . .”
    Tobias continued on. He had a deep, comforting voice, which I liked to listen to. I examined the note, then looked up at Ivy, who shrugged.
    The door opened, and Wilson entered with the lemonade and Ivy’s water. I noticed J.C. standing outside, his gun out as he peeked into the room and inspected the young man. J.C.’s eyes narrowed.
    “Wilson,” I said, taking my lemonade, “would you kindly send for Audrey?”
    “Certainly, master,” the butler said. I knew, somewhere deep within, that he had not really brought cups for Ivy and Tobias, though he made an act of handing something to the empty chairs. My mind filled in the rest, imagining drinks, imagining Ivy strolling over to pluck hers from Wilson’s hand as he tried to give it to where he thought she was sitting. She smiled at him fondly.
    Wilson left.
    “Well?” the young man asked. “Can you—”
    He cut off as I held up a finger. Wilson couldn’t see my projections, but he knew their rooms. We had to hope that Audrey was in. She had a habit of visiting her sister in Springfield.
    Fortunately, she walked into the room a few minutes later. She was, however, wearing a bathrobe. “I assume this is important,” she said, drying her hair with a towel.
    I held up the note, then the envelope with the money. Audrey leaned down. She was a dark-haired woman, a little on the chunky side. She’d joined us a few years back, when I’d been working on a counterfeiting case.
    She mumbled to herself for a minute or two, taking out a magnifying glass—I was amused that she kept one in her bathrobe, but that was Audrey for you—and looking from the note to the envelope and back. One had supposedly been written by the fiancée, the other by the young man.
    Audrey nodded. “Definitely the same hand.”
    “It’s not a very big sample,” I said.
    “It’s what?” the boy asked.
    “It’s enough in this case,” Audrey said. “The envelope has your full name and address. Line slant, word spacing, letter formation . . . all give the same answer. He also has a very distinctive e . If we use the longer sample as the exemplar, the envelope sample can be determined as authentic—in my estimation—at over a ninety percent reliability.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “I could use a new dog,” she said, strolling away.
    “I’m not imagining you a puppy, Audrey. J.C. creates enough racket! I don’t want a dog running around here barking.”
    “Oh, come on,” she said, turning at the doorway. “I’ll feed it fake food and give it fake water and take it