Leif the Lesser sat in his temporary office within the Governor's Palace of York; the room was cluttered with cipher wheels and stacks of parchment.
He received a small, tightly rolled scroll which was carried by a pigeon from the south; in this scroll, it described the scene in which his brother Erik had witnessed the transaction between the Frankish Envoy and the Church's messenger.
Leif tapped a charcoal pencil against his desk as he decoded the simple substitution cipher. He suspected sooner or later the Church would try to secure a beachhead; it was only a matter of time before the Bishop offered the Franks a port they could not refuse.
After reading the words the message contained, Leif burned it in a small brass bowl before leaving his room, seeking out Ragnar to inform him of the crucial issue at hand. Before long, he found Ragnar in the War Room reviewing the blueprints for the new sewage treatment plant of City Titan.
