The Otherwhere Post

Chapter 13

“An advanced scribing is defined as one that cannot be recreated easily by another scriptomancer,” Mordraig said as he walked across the stage of a lecture hall the following afternoon. “The Written Doors, for instance, are very advanced, considering nobody has a clue how they work. But that’s an extreme example. Most advanced scribings simply use more advanced sentence structures and word usage.”

“Does he have to speak so loudly?” Nan whispered into Maeve’s ear, looking worse than she had the day before.

“He is the one standing up there, attempting to lecture,” Maeve whispered back.

Nan grumbled and put her face in her palms. She’d made sure to sit beside Maeve yet again, determined to use every opportunity to woo her into some mythical friendship. But Maeve didn’t need Nan, and she certainly didn’t need Tristan.

Shame spilled through her as she thought of how ridiculous she must have looked while standing in his bedroom in her nightgown. But the most dangerous part was how he’d noticed the scab on her wrist. She touched it, hopelessly bothered that she couldn’t write her name, and that Tristan had recognized her poor attempt instantly. She would have to be more careful if she attempted it again. More secretive.

Maeve jolted as Mordraig clapped his hands. “In the coming days, I would like you all to find the Scriptorium and start on a particular sense scribing that we call the coffee scribing. We’ve placed a practice stack of the original text on each of your worktables. Once you get it to work, reading the text will have the same effect as a few cups of coffee. You’ll have to redo the scribing each morning, since the arcane magic in any scribing diminishes after each use. But a word of warning: never read a coffee scribing later than noon. Nobody wants to hear you singing at the top of your lungs in the middle of the night.”

He excused them all.

Nan tried to drag Maeve to dinner in the mess hall, but Maeve made a quick excuse and headed to the Scriptorium. She wasn’t ready to try the traveling scribing again, but maybe if she could get another type of scribing to work, it could help her hunt down her old friend . At least it would tell her if she were adept, and she couldn’t help but be curious.

Most couriers had already left for the night. It was dark as Maeve climbed to where her assigned worktable sat in a corner of the sixth floor. She dragged her fingers across the rough-hewn wood already stocked with supplies, including a pile of practice sheets with the same handwritten paragraph for what had to be the coffee scribing.

She scanned a note on the top of the stack from Mordraig. He explained that she was to use the pre-mixed scribing pigment in her top drawer, then scribe a sentence after the passage, commanding the reader to wake up. That the paragraph was an excerpt from an epic poem about a scriptomancer who wrote a skin scribing on his eyelids that left him unable to slumber for a year. He said this particular passage was used for the coffee scribing because of the Law of Intentions.

Scribing only amplifies the intention of the original text. You cannot command a love letter to make a reader feel hate. You can always try, but Arcane Infusion simply won’t happen. Good luck and DON’T FORGET CREMATORY ASH!

There were no left-handed quills. The box with the swan quill sat in Maeve’s saddlebag, but she didn’t dare to waste it. Instead, she found a right-handed crow quill already sharpened.

Smoothing a layer of crematory ash on the back of the paper with the coffee scribing text, Maeve turned the page over and scratched a command along the bottom, then did the same to three more practice sheets, using variations of the sentence. She checked The Scriptomancer’s Companion , then sealed each scribing with the circle used on sense scribings.

She waited. Her sentences looked perfect, but despite her best efforts, none of them disappeared into the paper.

Not adept at sense scribings, it seemed. That left four more types.

Maeve paged to the section on memory scribings. Done correctly, they showed the specific memory that was written about in the original text, but how the memory manifested depended on the skill of the scriptomancer. A simple memory scribing could plant an image, while an advanced memory scribing could do more, like show her the Aldervine as if she were living it.

Maeve flipped though her journal and ripped out a page—one where she’d waxed on about the Alewick cliffs. She dipped her quill and wrote a sentence at the bottom, then sealed it with the spiral used on all memory scribings.

Nothing happened.

She did it to three more pages, and still nothing. She opened the bottom drawer to discard the failed scribings and tensed.

An envelope rested beneath her worktable.

The sixth floor looked empty at first glance. A few gas lamps threw yellow light against the dark, cavernous corners, but many of the surrounding worktables were still bathed in shadows.

“Hello?” Maeve called out, but nobody answered.

She was only being paranoid. Anyone could have looked up her assigned table and left her the letter ages ago. It could be completely innocent. But she had a feeling it was from the same person as the bleeding letter.

I’m watching you.

A shiver raced through her. She held the envelope to the gas lamp on her worktable, letting the light seep into it. But the paper was too thick to read anything inside. She debated ripping it to shreds, but if there was a new message, it might be best to at least know what it said—so long as she was careful about it.

Maeve pinched a scoop of ash, then ripped the envelope and peeled the letter open to a paragraph of deep red writing that began with:

It rises from darkness…

That was as far as Maeve got before the paper grew too heavy to hold. It clattered to her worktable like a stone, face down.

Something moved beneath it. The back of the page rippled, then bulged into a large blister that grew. Red ink bled through, until the paper disintegrated, leaving a ball of writhing ink.

Maeve lurched backward and tossed her ash, but the ink slid out of the way, then over the side of her desk. Once on the floor, it rose on clawed fingers that began scrabbling their way toward her.

Her ash satchel sat on the desk, but the creature was in the way—too close. Not knowing what to do, she ran for the stairwell. The scrabbling sounds followed her down two flights, until she spotted a lit lamp in the corner of a deserted floor. A man hunched over a pile of letters.

She raced toward him, the scribing still chasing her.

“Please help me,” she said, climbing onto his cluttered worktable.

Papers flew to the floor, glass rolled and broke as she crouched, looking around her, breathing hard.

Where was it? It had to be somewhere close. Maeve listened for the sounds of its claws against the wood but heard nothing. Then she spotted a small puddle of dark red ink three tables over. Unmoving. Its arcane magic must have run out.

A throat cleared.

She turned to stare across at Tristan seated behind the worktable. His worktable. And she crouched on it like a rabbit in a snare.

A new splash of ink soiled his vest. Her doing? His mouth twitched terribly, of course. She had to look ridiculous. Carefully, she slipped her shaking legs down, leaning against the desk.

“Now tell me,” Tristan said. “Shall I call my father to berate you or a Leylish clinician to have a look at your head?”

“There was a mouse,” she said without hesitating.

His eyes narrowed. “A mouse, you say?”

“A large mouse.” She drew two fingers to her mouth. “With big yellow teeth.”

“A large, yellow-toothed mouse,” he repeated seriously, then chewed away a rather unserious smile. “And this creature chased you down from the upper floors?”

“It was fast. Probably rabid.”

“Did it throw anything at you as well? A bar of soap perhaps?”

“You’re poking fun.”

“It’s not very difficult when it comes to you.”

She wanted to march him to the red puddle and splash it at him, then explain everything. But he would demand to know why she was suddenly receiving letters that tried to hurt her. He would question everything.

She rubbed her temples. That red letter must have been a form scribing—the Postmaster’s specialty. She’d read more about them since she’d received that first letter, but Tristan would know even more than her.

“How dangerous can a form scribing get? Could it hurt someone fatally?” she asked.

That got his attention. “Did something hurt you?”

“No, not me.” Not yet.

He considered her. “A few years ago, a courier was dared to read a centuries-old form scribing taken from one of our libraries. The arcane magic had diminished over the years, but the scribing still managed to kill her.”

“How?”

“Form scribings transmute the ink of the original text into whatever the scribing commands, no matter how dangerous. The ink in that particular letter transmuted into worms that crawled inside her through her nail beds, then chewed their way out through her eyes before dissolving into rivulets of ink down her cheeks.”

Maeve grimaced. “Sounds like a fun way to go.”

“I’m sure it was. And that’s just one example. There are more gruesome stories out there. A form scribing can be as dangerous as a scriptomancer wishes it to be. That’s why it’s high treason to scribe anything but the mildest of them.”

She nodded, feeling suddenly ill.

“Is that anonymous letter of yours form-scribed?” he asked.

“No,” she said quickly. “This isn’t about my letter.” Not that letter, anyhow. It was about the claws on that creature that had sliced her worktable. It would have sliced her skin to ribbons if she hadn’t run. Now that red puddle still stared at her.

A form scribing meant to hurt her. Maybe kill her.

I’m watching you.

Her watcher apparently didn’t like whatever she was doing. Except she had done nothing but wander aimlessly! She hadn’t spoken with her old friend or uncovered anything useful. Unless she counted growing weepy at every memory of her father. She didn’t want to imagine what might happen if she started finding real answers.

Her stomach lurched at the thought. She braced herself on the worktable, cursing as a pigment soaked into her sleeve. “I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?”

Her voice shook, along with her hands.

“It’s only a little mess. Let me help you.” He placed his palm against her waist and guided her into a nearby chair.

The touch was only meant to help, but it sent a ripple of heat down her sides. She knew she should probably stay put, but she tried to stand and wobbled.

He nudged her firmly back down. “Try to stand again in the next few minutes, and I’ll be forced to strap you to the chair.” He unbuttoned his vest.

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning.”

“You know how to clean?” She didn’t think he had it in him.

He threw her a halfhearted glare, then rolled his shirtsleeves and went to work dabbing spilled ink, wiping everything. When the table was clean, he pulled up a chair and took out a stack of handwritten letters from a drawer.

“Deliveries?” Maeve asked.

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “God, no. They’re poems that I plan to form scribe so the ink manifests as a horde of evil mice.”

She scowled at the side of his head, which caused him to laugh. He uncapped some pigment, pouring it into a fresh inkwell, mixing other ingredients. Then he dipped a quill and began writing.

At first Maeve watched him to take her mind off that puddle of red ink, but after a little while, she couldn’t look away.

She’d thought he was a talented pianist, but he wrote as if his fingers were made for that singular purpose. He barely glanced at the words. They flowed out of him in a river as he penned fourteen detailed tracking scribings, finishing them all with the eye seal in less than ten minutes.

Her father was never that fast.

“I hope this doesn’t go to your head, but you’re good at that,” she said.

Tristan’s mouth curved a little. Only a little, though. He stuffed the scribed letters inside their envelopes and started on another stack.

His scribing was stunning. Impossible to look away from. After another few minutes, he glanced her way, and she realized she was staring open-mouthed. Her neck heated, and she tore her eyes away then scanned the area around them.

Tristan’s worktable was in a corner beside a few overfilled bookcases, ratty chairs, and a large mop bucket. There were other worktables on the floor, but none close by. “You’re all by yourself over here.”

He dipped his quill. “The steward who assigns worktables moved me here. I think they were sick of taking requests from people who wanted to be moved away from me.”

He made it sound like it was normal to be so hated.

“Why is everyone like that around you?”

“I’ve already told you. Jealousy over my wardrobe,” he said without looking away from his work.

He was obviously still hiding something, and she wanted to get to the bottom of it.

She waited a beat, then asked, “Does it have something to do with your last apprentice?” He’d alluded to it that first night in his father’s office, then again in the woods when she’d rescued his shoe from the mud.

Tristan’s hand stilled, silver pigment pooling beneath his nib. “Last year, my apprentice got herself in trouble and the whole situation angered a number of people. So yes, you could say it has something to do with her.”

So the glass of milk dumped on his chair was indeed because of his last apprentice. Maeve waited for him to explain what it had to do with scriptomancy—something he was clearly gifted at. To give any hint at why the bruises beneath his eyes seemed darker every time they spoke, his expensive clothing more disheveled. But Tristan remained tight-lipped, racing through his scribing like Molly Blackcaster’s ghost had commandeered his hand.

Maeve had her own secrets to run from, but apparently so did he.