Divide and Conquer Read Online Free PDF

instruments, she wasn’t all that skilled at constructing fortress walls. Finally, after she’d gotten in the way one too many times, the bishop suggested that a better task for her might be running messages back and forth between the two defensive towers guarding the bridges on either side of the island.
    She was just crossing through the center of the city on her way back north when someone fell into step next to her. She glanced over to find a teen boy, probably not much older than her, with closely cropped hair and an angular face. Immediately her guard went up — she recognized him as someone who’d been hovering around Riq, Dak, and her for much of the day, never far out of earshot.
    “Lovely night,” he said, and she grunted in response. That didn’t keep him from trying to engage her in conversation. “I don’t believe we’ve met before. Have you been in Paris long? Where are you from?”
    It was a lot of questions for one stranger to ask another, and Sera waved her hand in the air. “Here and there,” she answered noncommittally as she picked up her pace.
    The boy sped up as well. “I was born here, but my family’s from Northumbria in Britain. Lindisfarne, actually. Have you heard of it?”
    Sera cut a glare at him. She didn’t really care where he was from and she didn’t know why he kept talking to her.
    Nevertheless, he pushed on. “My great-great-great-uncle was a monk there. At Lindisfarne Priory. He’s who I’m named after, actually. Oh, I never did introduce myself properly. I’m Billfrith.” He paused, clearly waiting for her to introduce herself, but she kept quiet — and kept moving. But the boy didn’t take the hint.
    “I guess not that many people have heard of Lindisfarne Priory these days, which is really a shame. During its time it was a great place of learning. The monks specialized in history, with a keen interest in Aristotle and his pupil Alexander.”
    This got Sera’s attention, and she stopped abruptly. Her mind whirred over the riddle from the SQuare: “Upset the clue within: . . . Find a roofless inn.” She began playing with the letters, “upsetting” their order until she found a new arrangement. Suddenly, “find a roofless inn” morphed into “son of Lindisfarne.”
    She sucked in a breath. “Wait, what was that last bit?”
    Billfrith had to double back. “My ancestors were monks at Lindisfarne Priory, which was once the greatest library in the world. They’d collected more information about Aristotle than anyone else. The priory was destroyed in a raid by the Danes over a century ago, and my great-great-great-uncle was the only one who survived. He’s passed down everything he knew. Everyone in my family is quite the, ah,
historian
.” He smiled. “Including me.”

D AK KNEW Sera would be furious, but that didn’t stop him from sneaking from the north tower and slipping into the darkness of the mainland. It had been ages since Sera had gone to deliver a message to the south tower, and Dak had no idea how much longer the darkness would last; they’d had to ditch their watches after their first time warp so they wouldn’t look suspicious. He still hadn’t gotten used to telling time by the movement of the stars or sun, and he wasn’t willing to risk losing the chance to check out the Viking ships firsthand.
    Besides, Sera had left the SQuare with him and he had it tucked into a satchel slung across his shoulder, so technically he was still trying to work out the code they’d found earlier. He just wasn’t doing it at that exact moment.
    Escaping Riq’s notice was easy once the older boy began nodding off as the night stretched on. And since the tower was situated on the mainland, he didn’t have to risk crossing the bridge and getting noticed. Really, all he needed to do was not appear suspicious. He’d learned a long time ago that if you looked like you belonged, people tended to ignore you. It worked just as well in the ninth century as it