The Bloodline Cipher by Stephen Cole Page B

else’s ideas, sharing possible approaches. Face to face, I mean,’ he said quickly.
    Maya smiled. ‘Yes. It is very … stimulating.’
    Something about the way she said it made him blush. ‘Um …’ He cleared his throat and looked firmly at the screen, trying to get back to business. ‘Have those characters been traced over?’ he said. ‘Looks like two different inks have been used.’
    Maya nodded, serious again. ‘The main part of the manuscript was written in tempera paint – parts have faded over the years. Certain words and symbols look darker throughout because they’ve been retouched – probably around the same time the appendix was added. The inks are very similar.’
    â€˜Any idea how many years passed between the original and the retouching?’
    â€˜Hard to say,’ Maya admitted. ‘But the later characters are drawn as fluidly as the originals. It could have been the original author, coming back to his work, or at least someone who was familiar with that “alphabet”.’
    â€˜Let’s hope so. ’Cause if he traced any of the symbols wrongly …’ Jonah enlarged a section where two characters in the middle of a word had been overwritten. The original ink was just barely visible beneath the darker strokes. ‘It’s going to mess up any text analysis we try.’
    â€˜Speaking of text analysis … how’re you with Chinese languages?’
    â€˜Huh?’
    Maya leaned forward to enlarge part of a page, affording Jonah a glimpse down her top as she did so. He saw the edge of a tattoo peeping over the top of her black bra and found himself staring.
God, I’m turning into Patch
, he thought, looking quickly at the screen. He forced himself to focus on the weird symbol Maya had highlighted, drawn in muddy red ink.
    â€˜These exotic symbols are the only things common to both sections of the manuscript,’ she explained, apparently oblivious to any effect she’d had on him. ‘They’re different to any of the characters in the body of the text, and often written in a different ink.’
    â€˜Could be headings, or chapter titles?’
    â€˜Or maybe signifying sections of a separate code book that can translate the pages.’ She enlarged the symbol still further and looked at him, her grey gaze intent. ‘The drawing of Chinese goddess Guan Yin on the title page could be a big clue. Up until the last few hundred years, more than half of the world’s literature was written in Chinese characters.’
    â€˜Pictograms and ideograms. Symbols representing ideas or things rather than actual words.’ Jonah nodded. ‘Well, I’ve broken hieroglyph codes before. They’re usually quite logical once you get into the swing of them. What do you think this one means?’
    â€˜It looks to me like the character
ròu
, inverted then turned upside down.’ Maya drew the pictogram, which to Jonah resembled a box with most of its bottom missing and two up-pointing arrowheadsinside it. She looked at him, something unfathomable simmering in her eyes. ‘It’s supposed to represent a hacked-open carcass. It means
meat
or
flesh
.’ She scrolled to the bottom of the page, where a fainter symbol sat close beside a crude drawing of someone screaming. ‘And if we invert and rotate this symbol seventy degrees, it starts to look a bit like the pictogram for
ji
– meaning
temple
, or
offer sacrifice to
.’
    â€˜So – “
flesh offer sacrifice to temple
”. Sounds fun,’ Jonah said wryly. ‘What was that you were saying about not believing those lurid tabloid takes on black magic?’
    â€˜There are many kinds of sacrifice.’ Maya paused, and when she spoke again her voice held a more challenging tone. ‘Look at the way you and your friends have given yourselves to Coldhardt.’
    Jonah frowned. ‘You