The Otherwhere Post

Chapter 32

Maeve ran to the upstairs lavatory, but the letter wasn’t there either. She had taken it out when she’d bathed earlier. It had to be here. Unless someone picked it up.

She raced downstairs, halting at the sight of Shea in front of the fireplace, her hair dripping—fresh from a bath and reading something. She noticed Maeve and held up a crumpled paper. “It was on the lavatory floor just now. I’m assuming it’s yours?”

Maeve came forward and snatched it away, smoothing out the wrinkles with her fingertips.

Tristan came into the room, along with Nan. They were all staring at her.

“It’s a love letter that my mother wrote to my father,” she said, anticipating the question.

Shea frowned. “Sibilla is your mother?”

Maeve blinked, confused. “Sibilla didn’t write it,” she said.

“Yes, she did. I thought the handwriting looked familiar, so I dug through my saddlebag and found this.” Shea pulled a few yellow slips of paper and handed one to Maeve. A request slip from the Second Library. The top half was filled out by Shea, the bottom half filled out and signed by Sibilla Creel. “I thought I recognized her handwriting in the lavatory, but if you look between the two papers, it’s obvious.”

Maeve held the pages side by side.

Tristan and Nan both came over to have a look.

Maeve wasn’t sure how much time passed. “It can’t be,” she murmured, going numb from shock.

“They could have had similar writing, I suppose,” Nan said.

“But that’s identical.”

The love letter was written in large, rounded letters with descenders that looped in perfect circles. She had always thought her mother had the most distinctive handwriting she had ever seen.

“We should still check everything under a scribing glass to be sure,” Tristan said.

“There’s one in my grandfather’s old office.” Shea led the way through the first floor to an old worktable in the corner of a library.

Tristan placed both papers on the table, then adjusted the scribing glass overhead to magnify a small section of each paper. He moved his finger back and forth from one paper to the other. “I think the penmanship is identical.”

Of course it was. It was painfully obvious.

Sibilla had penned the love letter.

A ringing began in Maeve’s ears. Her father told her he exchanged letters with her mother for years before Maeve was born. That their love story began with ink on paper. A letter can become an extension of your soul if you will it, a trapped part of you that shakes loose whenever someone reads your words.

Maeve sometimes wondered if she carried a piece of her mother’s soul with her always, wrapped inside the old envelope and tucked flush against her hip bone.

The letter Sibilla wrote.

Not her mother.

Sibilla had given a love letter to her father. By the subject matter, it was most likely given after her mother died. She hoped so, anyway. If it was before—

Tristan squeezed her hand. “Are you all right?”

“I think I might be ill.”

“Waste bin’s in the corner!” Shea pointed.

Maeve made a dash for it, retching away the scant bit of bread she had eaten earlier. She collapsed against the wall, breathing heavily through her nose. “If this is all a terrible dream, will you let me know when I should wake up?”

“It’s not so bad,” Shea said, lifting the letter. “This is just proof your father and Sibilla were…close once.”

“What if she’s the one behind the Oxblood letters?” Tristan asked.

“Sibilla?” That was hard for Maeve to believe. She’d helped her escape the library, after all.

Nan came forward. “Our first week, Sibilla tried to open the door to our room.”

Maeve looked at her. “What?”

“Sibilla was surprised to see me. Then she said she was lost.” Nan blinked and shook her head. “She seemed genuine, so I never thought to mention it.”

Heavens, that would have been right before their room was rifled through, when her journal was stolen and left open on her desk for Nan to find.

Maeve turned to Tristan. He’d gone pale. “What’s wrong?”

“I had a strange interaction with Sibilla the day after the stewards found Cath dead. She asked which books Cath was looking at. She said she wanted to know so she could mark them as missing since they were all taken for the investigation. That didn’t surprise me, but then she asked about other things that might have been on Cath’s worktable. She wanted to know exactly what was confiscated, then grew agitated when I told her. I thought it was just a reaction to an apprentice dying, but what if there was more to it?”

“But if Sibilla murdered Cathriona, why would she want to know what was on the worktable? Wouldn’t she have seen it for herself?” Maeve asked.

“It’s still suspicious,” Shea said. “It’s a shame that nobody signed their name in that sales ledger.”

“What sales ledger?” Tristan asked.

Maeve told him about going to Plume Shea and Nan had already left. Tristan would go without her if she couldn’t do this.

Her clammy fingers left damp streaks down her cloak. She walked to the wall and pulled down a coarse brush that looked too large for human hair. She had no idea what she was doing, but she held the brush to the horse’s chin hairs, cooing, as if calming a baby. It seemed the sort of thing a stable hand might do. She waggled the brush. “If you let me close enough to grab your reins, I’ll comb out your tangles and make you look pretty.”

“I think if you don’t stop this foolishness, I might expire from laughter.”

Maeve spun.

Tristan leaned one shoulder against the doorframe.

He walked past her and took Butternut’s reins, leading the horse out himself. Maeve stayed a few steps away as he swung up onto the horse’s back and reached a hand down.

She stared at it.

“You’ll never get over your fears unless you face them.”

With a silent curse, she slipped her hand inside of his. He pulled her onto the saddle, directly behind him. Her thighs pushed against Butternut’s rib cage, moving in and out with the horse’s breath. Slowly, she let herself relax. It wasn’t as bad as she was imagining. “I’m on a horse.”

“For the second time this week. Although the first time, you were unconscious. I’d say this is a vast improvement.”

In the end, it was good they took the horse. The ride to Gloam went by in under an hour. They rode hard across fields dappled by winter sun, until the gray stone buildings of the city swallowed them. Church bells tolled as they made their way up the river of sleet-covered cobblestones, past students in coats and scarves and workers in winter boots and hats. A man darted out of their way with a steaming bun in his fist that should have made Maeve’s mouth water, but her stomach was twisted into knots. She kept her hood tight around her face, her hair hidden beneath her courier cloak.

They passed a few officers, but none paid them notice. Every few minutes, however, someone would look their way, or a voice would shout, and Maeve would dig herself into Tristan’s back, unable to shake the feeling of wrongness.

“Don’t take too long,” she said as he helped her down from Butternut, then tied the horse to a block between the snow-covered cemetery and the minister’s records building.

“I’ll try to hurry, but the last time I sifted through the Inverly records, it took an hour.” He smiled at her and smoothed down a wild strand of her hair, tucking it behind her ear.

“Then I’ll stay put in the cemetery and try not to get myself in too much trouble,” Maeve said.

He arched an eyebrow. “For some reason, I doubt you’re capable of that.”

Within minutes, the sky opened. Heavy, wet snowflakes began falling that soaked into Maeve’s shoulders. She threw up her hood and traipsed down a gravel path through the cemetery that snaked north, weaving around iced-over headstones and enormous mausoleums probably built to house the remains of families like the Widdens. The dark gray stones pressed around her in the silent snow.

After several minutes of waiting, Maeve caught a movement to her left. The black sweep of a cloak.

“Tristan!” she called out, and ran toward him. But it wasn’t Tristan. The figure was shorter, with wide-set shoulders. A man wearing a courier’s cloak.

Heading in her direction.

Maeve stumbled backward, searching the gravestones for somewhere to hide. One nearby was larger than the others. She dove for it. Pressing her back against an embossing of doves, she held her breath until she was positive the man had gone. Slowly, she stood up. A courier with a slight double chin and bright hazel eyes stood waiting on the opposite side of the gravestone with a letter in his hand. He held it out for her to take.

He was only attempting to deliver it.

Maeve stared at it. But before she could decide what to do, the courier’s eyes traveled from Maeve’s cloak to her face and hair, then down to the envelope. It fell from his fingers, landing atop the gravestone.

“I didn’t understand the letter, but now…You’re her, aren’t you? You’re the girl they’re searching for. The apprentice.”

Maeve glanced down at the unmarked envelope with dawning horror. This man would have read the content of whatever was inside while he scribed it for delivery.

“Someone help!” he called, but nobody was close enough to hear.

Maeve snatched the envelope and took off running, dipping around gravestones and trees, up footpaths until her lungs burned.

She exited the graveyard and continued racing down twisting streets, not daring to look behind her until she was blocks away and there was no sight of that courier.

Crouching against the uneven stones of a building side, she tore the envelope open, and hesitated. She had no ash. But it didn’t matter; if that otherwhere courier had scribed it, it wouldn’t hurt her, and she had to know what it said.

She pulled it out and unfolded it to a blocky paragraph in Oxblood ink, written in such a way that she couldn’t tell if it was Sibilla’s handwriting or not.

Maeve,

Many people are trying to locate you, which is difficult without a name. But if you’re reading this letter, it means they’ll have yours soon enough. I would run.