Free This Isn't What It Looks Like by Pseudonymous Bosch Page A

far too subtle for Max-Ernest to discern.
    Lunch ended shortly thereafter. As the reunited friends parted ways, Benjamin coughed and lowered his voice.
    “Max-Ernest, old chum, I don’t want to embarrass you, but there’s a piece of paper stuck to your back…. May I?”
    Gravely and politely, Benjamin unpinned the paper and handed it to Max-Ernest.
    Max-Ernest groaned. It was a classic schoolyard prank—one played on him dozens of times over the years. There were two words
     written on the paper:
KICK ME
    “Thanks,” he said through gritted teeth.
    “Don’t mention it.” Benjamin gave a little bow, then sauntered away.
    Max-Ernest was about to toss the offending paper in the trash when he noticed that there was writing on the back side. It
     looked like some kind of travel advisory.
    WARNING:
    L TRAIN–ORD, FARE CHANGING.
    BRING OLIVES, NOT N-WORDS.
    The wording was so strange that Max-Ernest immediately suspected he was looking at a coded message from the Terces Society.
     Travel-derived encryptions were a personal favorite of Pietro’s. But what did it mean? Max-Ernest could tell at a glance it
     wasn’t a keyword code or any kind of simple alphabet substitution.
    ORD were the call letters for Chicago O’Hare Airport. Was he meant to go there? Why? How? * Presumably, there was an L (short for
elevated
) train in Chicago that led to the airport. But as for the fare changing, why should he care? He didn’t even know how much
     the old fare had been.
    BRING OLIVES, NOT N-WORDS. Max-Ernestfigured the key to decoding the message lay in that last sentence, simply because it was the oddest.
Olive
was a word/name that occurred often in palindromic form—e.g.,
EVIL = OLIVE
. The most likely solution, Max-Ernest concluded, would involve if not a palindrome then at least an anagram.
WORDS = SWORD
? But then what about the
N
?
    The n-word was usually
no
, but the plural suggested the meaning had to be something else. Bring olives, not
nuts
? Not
newspapers
? Not
nuclear bombs
?
    Uncharacteristically, Max-Ernest gave up and slipped the message into his back pocket. Normally, a message from the Terces
     Society would be a top priority for him, and he would forgo all other activity until it was decoded. But this one would have
     to wait, he decided. He had a more pressing matter to attend to: Cass. *
    A moment later, in the library, Max-Ernest wrote an e-mail to Yo-Yoji, telling him about the unlikely return of Benjamin Blake.
     And about how desperate he was to bring Cass back to the present.
    Get inside Cass’s head, Pietro had instructed him. He had to figure out how right away.

C ompared to the horrifying description of the pigpen in “The Legend of Cabbage Face,” the royal kennels didn’t look like such
     a bad place to stay the night. Indeed, they were rather splendid.
    The kennels occupied a long brick building designed to resemble the palace in miniature. Inside, the walls were painted with
     murals of dogs frolicking in the woods and giving chase to a frightened fox while chubby canine cherubim smiled down at them.
     Each of the King’s prize beagles had his own tufted velvet pillow trimmed with gold braid so thick and opulent, you would
     have expected to see it hanging from the canopy above the King’s own bed. Meanwhile, each beagle meal was served in a silver
     tureen with a royal crest engraved in the center and the beagle’s name engraved on the rim.
    And such meals!
    As the visibly hungry homunculus was dragged in by the soldier, the regal beagles were feasting on all sorts of meats and
     poultries dripping with delicious fats and juices. Cass noticed the homunculus’s eyes linger on a standing rib roast currently
     being devoured by the first and fattest and clearly most favored in the line of dogs—Terrence III, according to his bowl.
     Is this where Mr. Cabbage Face develops his obsession with crown roasts? Cass wondered.
    As the homunculus passed by, his mouth watering, Terrence looked up from