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Quoin,” Remi murmured, thinking aloud as they walked. “Three options: a wedge used to secure printer’s blocks; wedges used to raise the barrel of a cannon; or architectural cornerstones. It has to be the last one. I don’t see any printing presses or artillery.”
Sam nodded absently, half his attention on keeping Kholkov and his partner in sight; they were halfway down the path to the chapel. Their heads swiveled this way and that, searching for their quarry.
Remi continued brainstorming: “A lot of corners around, but we have to assume it’s not one of the wood buildings.”
The split-rail fence on their left gave way to a hedge-lined Biergarten with umbrella-covered patio tables. A Bavarian brass band played an oompah folk song as onlookers clapped and sang along. Sam and Remi left the Biergarten behind and circled around the rear, lodge-like portion of the chapel to the north lawn.
“Cannon,” Sam said, stopping in his tracks. “Sort of.”
Remi followed his outstretched arm. Thirty yards away in the middle of the lawn was a waist-high stone pedestal. Mounted atop it was an ornamental bronzed sextant, a premodern navigation tool generally used to find the altitude of the sun above the horizon. Where most sextants were no larger than an opened hardcover book, this one was four to five times that size, measuring roughly four feet on a side. Its comically large telescope resembled the barrel of a blunderbuss.
Sam and Remi walked over. There were fewer people here; most visitors were sticking to the gravel paths, their attention focused on the chapel, the mountains, or the fjord.
“There’s a plaque,” Remi said. “It’s in German.”
Sam leaned down for a better look and translated: “Presented August of 1806 to Elector Maximilian I Joseph, House of Wittelsbach, member of the Confederation of the Rhine and King of Bavaria by Napoleon I, Emperor of the French.”
“If that isn’t a clue I don’t know what is,” Remi said. “Here, Sam, look at this.”
He moved to where she had knelt down. The lower part of the sextant consisted of a vertical index arm designed to slide over a curved arc engraved with notches, each indicating one-sixtieth of a degree. A gap in the index arm showed the arc’s current reading. It was set to seventy.
“Not a trio,” Remi said. “Would have been nice if it’d been set on three.”
Sam suddenly grabbed her arm and moved them around the pedestal, putting it between them and the chapel area. Through the arms of the sextant they could see Kholkov and his partner walking down the path toward the outbuildings nearer the trees.
“Maybe it is,” Sam said. “Let’s think outside the box: If the sextant is our cannon and the notches on the arc are quoins—the wedges—this part of Laurent’s riddle is metaphorical.”
“Go on.”
“Remember the line: ‘A trio of Quoins, their fourth lost, shall point the way to Frigisinga.’ That suggests that a fourth quoin would complete the group. If you have a completed group, what percentage do you have?”
“A hundred.”
“So each quoin would represent a quarter of the total. How many notches on the arc?”
Remi checked. “A hundred forty-two.”
Sam mentally did the math:
142 / 4 quoins = 35.5
35.5 x 3 quoins = 106.5
He said, “Okay, so if we were to lift the barrel to a hundred six degrees . . .”
They both knelt behind the sextant and imagined the telescope angled upward to its new position. It was aimed directly at the for wardmost minaret atop the red-roofed onion domes.
“I guess that’s what you call X marks the spot,” Remi said. “Met aphorically, of course.”
“Triangle marks the spot,” Sam corrected. “Hopefully.”
They hadn’t taken ten steps back toward the chapel when a voice came over the loudspeaker, making an announcement first in German and then in English:
“Attention, visitors. We apologize for the inconvenience, but we have just been alerted of an impending storm. Due to expected heavy winds, we will be closing the park early. Please proceed immediately but calmly to the dock area and follow the instructions of park staff. Thank you.”
Around Sam and Remi there came the babble of disappointed voices and mothers and fathers calling to children. Faces turned upward, scanning the blue sky.
Sam said, “I don’t see any—”