Translates tapping language

I bustled about her rooms as I began to brew her some tea. “Did the
tapping you heard today help?”

“Oh, very much so.” She tossed herself down on her bed like a truculent
child. “When you first mimicked his tapping, Din, I realized that portions of
it felt intentionally repetitious. Like notes or motifs in a piece of music,
perhaps. And then I thought—well, perhaps it wasn’t music! Perhaps it was
language.”

I had been trying to start the fire in her stove, but I stopped when I heard
that. “As in, a code, ma’am?”

“Precisely! And it was one I was glancingly familiar with. Here…let me
see if I can find it…”

She leapt to her feet, paced to her box of books, ripped one out, and
flipped through its pages. Then she pounced back over to me and shoved the
book in my face. “There. Look familiar?”

I squinted at the pages, the tiny text swimming before my eyes. The book
appeared to be Histories of Forgotten Religious Orders, and on the page before
me was a bizarre diagram, almost like music notes all set upon one line, with
blots of ink, followed by dashes, followed by triple dots.

“It… does not look familiar to me, ma’am,” I confessed. “In fact, I’ve no
idea at all what I’m looking at.”

She shut the book with a snap. “Ah. I will go ahead and assume, then,
that you are not familiar with the Adherents of the Sallow Fields?”

I waved wearily. “Assume away.”

“Few are, these days,” she said. “They are a sect of monks that practice
an unusual vow of verbal silence in their monastery. Much like the earth
spirits they claim to worship, they do not speak aloud. Instead, they tap—
rapping three fingers in a rhythmic, mathematical alphabet, upon boards they
hang about their necks. It’s a tricky way to talk—they have to wait one at a
time to tap out their messages, otherwise it gets very hard to hear. Rather
unsurprising, then, that their order is quite rapidly dying. Think they’re down
to a few dozen now. Poor sods.”

“This is the code that Ghrelin was using? But…why is an Apoth
communicating like a silent, mad monk?” I said, frustrated.

“I don’t know.”

“And why would the impostor do the same thing?”

“Oh, I’ve no fucking idea to any of this, child! Why train someone in
such a thing? Unless, of course, both Ghrelin and our impostor were
participating in some unusual duties there on the Shroud. Duties that for
some reason required tapping. And duties that Thelenai and her crew do not
wish us to know about!”

“Can we translate this code of Ghrelin’s?” I said. “Will it take days, or
weeks, or—”

“Oh, it is a simple pattern, and easily mastered.” She waved a hand. “I
believe I had it all translated on the ride back today.”
There was a beat of silence.

“You… have mastered a nonverbal language used by a dying sect of
monks, ma’am,” I said dubiously, “in less than a day?”

“I mean, it’s not too technical,” she said. “It’s just three damned fingers
tapping, it can only be so complex.” She saw the skeptical look on my face.

“Would you like me to translate what Ghrelin said, Din,” she snapped, “or
would you prefer to stand there and keep doubting me like a stubborn little
prick?”

“Translate away, ma’am.”

“Right…” She cleared her throat and said, “Unless I am mistaken, today
our friend Ghrelin was tapping out the words…Sorrow. Sorrow. Despair. We
are doomed. It is doomed. Failure. Sorrow. What have I done. Who has done
this to me. Despair. Doom. I am doomed. And yesterday, when you first met
him, his tapping was saying—No. No. No. No. How. Cannot be. Please, no.
Cannot be. Cannot be.” She sniffed. “And that, I think, was all. Not very
positive commentary, really.”

- A Drop of Corruption, Chapter 19 pgs. 137-139