Chapter Twenty-Eight
A part of him lived in these pages even if she couldn’t read them.
The smell of the sacristy turned from mint to magnolia when Seraphina touched Saint Nikolaus’ relic.
She held it in the palm of her hand, feeling its weight and waiting to see if anything else might happen.
Except that she enjoyed smelling the scent it gave off, she didn’t sense any significant change in her body or mind.
A relic could affect its wearer, the wearer’s surroundings, or specific people the wearer wanted to influence.
“It is a linen disk stitched in a radial pattern,” Rune interrupted her thoughts.
He was studying one of the poisonous lattices, tracing the pattern with his finger.
“Imagine a wagon wheel where each spoke ends in a tiny barb. The concentric ring nearest to the rim carries crowded nodes, and the inner ring is linked to it through cross-stitches.”
Seraphina set the relic into its box and tried to picture the lattice as Rune was describing it.
“And the keybone?” she asked.
“Off-center, fixed with a purple knot.”
“If I would have to guess, there’s no kill-stitch.”
“You would be guessing right.”
The keybone was, in fact, the keystone of a lattice, and it was the biggest bone shard and the most significant, which decided the behavior of the lattice.
For a medical lattice, for instance, a weaver would choose a shard coming from a relic that had been proven to have healing effects, and support it with smaller shards from similar relics.
The keybone directed the power, the supporting bones carried it, and the geometry of the pattern shaped it.
A kill-stitch was added – a contrasting thread, usually red, that cut across the working lines and could be easily pulled with a firm tug to snap those lines and shut off the pattern.
This was in case the lattice backfired and needed to be turned off quickly.
“So just undo the whole thing and be done with it. Break them both, and they won’t cause harm anymore.”
“Hm.” Was all that Rune said as he turned the lattice in his hands.
“What are you hoping to find?”
“This.” He pulled at a specific bone shard that was placed underneath the keybone.
“This one is different from the others, I can feel it. All the other bone shards have a corruptive signature. Most likely, they come from relics that modify the body and taint human physiology. But this one has clarity to it. It’s obvious in its brilliant white color and the way it shines.
I think whoever created this determined it was necessary for the pattern to work.
Something so dark needed a sliver of light for balance, or it would’ve consumed itself and collapsed. ”
“I... I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
Seraphina knew how to cut shards and file them into the perfect shapes that were needed, but didn’t have a sense for what they did and how they fit together. That was something only a... master weaver knew.
Not just a weaver – a senior journeyman – but a master weaver, born with the talent.
She ran a hand through her hair, not knowing how to feel about this revelation. Maybe it wasn’t a revelation at all, and she was reading too much into it.
“I think I can use this to create a new lattice that would work as an antidote. I only have two brilliant white shards, and I can use them as keybones. I’ll have to take apart an Antipyretic Net and an Anodyne Band for the supporting shards.
Or better yet...” He picked up Saint Nikolaus’ kneecap again.
“I believe this one does more than we think.”
“Really?”
“Think about it. It gives off a fresh miasma. Since we’ve opened the box and it has been sitting on the table, it has cleared the air in the room.
Don’t you feel better? I do. So, I believe this might just be a purifying relic.
It purifies the air, so why wouldn’t it purify water?
I could use two pieces of it as keybones and support them with the benefic shards from the Pestilent Wheels. ”
“You want to... Wait!” Seraphina jumped to her feet. “You want to cut Father Johann’s prized relic?”
“If it saves lives, I think he’d want that.”
“And you just called the bad lattices Pestilent Wheels?”
“I don’t know what the master weaver who made this pattern called it, but I think the name fits.”
It did, and he was right. When Rune told Barbara about his plan, she called Katharina and Willa, and Peter because he was visiting his wife, and they huddled in the sacristy and put it to a vote.
They were all in favor of cutting Saint Nikolaus’ relic if it meant there was a chance that a lattice built around it would end the bone fever.
He and Seraphina set to work. While she undid an Antipyretic Net and an Anodyne Band as Rune had instructed her, he pulled a piece of paper and started sketching possible patterns. She listened to the scratch of pencil on paper, and grew more and more annoyed by it.
“What you’re doing is something that only a master weaver knows how to do,” she told him. Her voice had an edge to it.
“Hm? Oh, all right.”
“Hm?” she echoed as her hands stopped moving.
“All right? That’s all you have to say? I thought you were a weaver.
Fine. That makes sense. Many relic schools train weavers and bring them to the point where they can fix lattices and copy patterns.
But master weavers are a different story, and today especially, you’ve been acting like one. ”
“I... I don’t know, Seraphina.” He stopped as well, the pencil hovering in the air.
Seraphina hated that she couldn’t see what he was drawing and judge for herself.
He could’ve been working on something brilliant, which would further prove he had the skills of a master weaver, or improvising some mangled design that would do nothing, which would mean he was just a regular weaver thinking he knew more than he did.
“I can see this is important to you,” he said. “But I don’t have an answer.” He touched his temple with suddenly trembling fingers.
“It’s not,” she lied, resuming her work. “I just feel like you’re keeping things from me.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but she stopped him.
“Don’t deny it, I know you are. But I also know you’re keeping those things from yourself. So, I shouldn’t be mad. I’m not. It’s not important, because it doesn’t change anything about you or about us.”
“I’m sorry...”
She sighed. One of these days, she’d have to tell him to stop saying that he was sorry every five minutes, but for now, she still liked to hear it. Even if he had nothing to be sorry about, those were words she hadn’t heard often enough before, and now she was indulging.
However, despite what she told herself, or him, her mood had gone sour.
She worked for another half hour, then set her work aside and told him she was going to the tavern.
They both had to eat, and she’d check to see what was available and bring food.
Rune hummed in acknowledgement and didn’t look up when she slipped through the door.
Seraphina found Peter in the kitchen, but he chased her out and said he would prepare a meal for her and Rune, that she should rest and warm up by the fire.
He didn’t look like someone who could be argued with, so Seraphina accepted a cup of beer from him and sat in front of the fire, extending her legs to warm her feet.
Outside, the wind was starting to pick up.
The air smelled like it was going to snow again, and this time, it would settle.
“Miss?”
Seraphina recognized Kaspar’s voice.
“Yes?”
“Can I sit with you for a minute?”
She gave him a smile. “All right.”
Kaspar was Peter’s youngest son, and he seemed to be shy when he wasn’t with his brother.
“Your mother is doing better,” she told him.
“I’ve heard. Thank you for what you’re doing for her and for the others.”
She nodded. “Where is your brother?”
“He’s outside, and I don’t have long. I wanted to give you this.”
He pushed something into Seraphina’s lap, and she touched it gingerly with the tips of her fingers. It seemed to be a book, tattered at the edges and with some pages poking out, as if they’d come undone. The cover was soft leather, and there was an engraving in it.
Seraphina gasped. “Where did you get this?”
The engraving was a scale of justice. The central pillar was a human femur, the crossbeam a humerus, and the pans were two skeletal hands cupped as if to hold weight. It was the sigil of House Syracuse, which symbolized the judgement of purity and the weighing of a soul’s worthiness.
This was Matteo’s journal.
“This is impossible,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t have this.”
“I apologize, Miss Seraphina. I didn’t steal it, I swear.
When I saw you the night you came, I thought I remembered you from somewhere.
It took me a while, but now I know. You were here two years ago with a handsome man who carried this pocketbook and wrote constantly in it.
He forgot it in a chair, right there.” He pointed at the table where she and Matteo had sat and ate. “When I found it, you’d already left.”
She opened it and ran her fingers over the pages. What she wouldn’t have given to have her eyes now and read Matteo’s beautiful writing that looped at every G and L. She felt the scratches of quill and pencil under her fingertips, but they weren’t prominent enough that she could read the words.
“He didn’t say anything,” she whispered.
“He probably didn’t know he’d lost it,” Kaspar offered.
“No, he would’ve known. He would’ve realized and asked to turn back for it.”
She closed the pocketbook and hugged it to her chest.
“Did you read it?”
“I...” He scratched the back of his neck. “I did. I was just learning how to read, and we haven’t many books...”
Seraphina took a breath and promised herself she wouldn’t get mad. Kaspar was just a boy, and back then, he was eight years old. Children were curious. She told herself it was a good thing someone had taught him how to read and that he went to school.
“I could tell you what it says–”
“No. Don’t.”
This was Matteo’s personal journal. It contained patterns and notes about relics and lattices, but also his most private thoughts.
She didn’t know what those were, and she hoped Kaspar was too young to understand them.
She had to believe that, or she’d start feeling envy toward the boy. He had eyes to read. She didn’t.
She’d rather not know what Matteo had written than hear it from the mouth of a stranger.
“Did you show it to anyone?” she asked. “Did anyone else read it?”
“No, Miss Seraphina. I swear it.”
“Good.”
“I realize now I shouldn’t have read it, but I thought I’d never seen you or him again.”
“It’s all right. Did you tell anyone?”
“No. I hid it at the bottom of a chest and didn’t touch it after that.
I looked for it now because I remembered you from two years ago.
My father doesn’t remember you, you know.
He thinks this is your first time at the Black Eagle.
But I remembered you because you were with him, and he forgot his book.
It didn’t come to me at once because... Well, because you look different. ”
She smiled bitterly. “Because I’m blind.”
“Yes. And you’re with a different man, and this one is not handsome.”
To that, Seraphina didn’t know what to say.
The situation was strange and unexpected, but she was glad this was happening.
Now she had something of Matteo’s, something intimate that he’d cared about deeply.
A part of him lived in these pages even if she couldn’t read them.
Maybe one day she’d find someone to read them for her, someone trustworthy.
Rune... He could read them for her. He could learn from Matteo’s work.
The moment that idea came to her, she shook her head.
Who knew what Matteo had written about her?
The opposite was also a possibility. Maybe he hadn’t mentioned her at all.
Whichever it was, she didn’t want Rune to know.
It felt appropriate to keep these two men separate – in her heart and from each other.
“Thank you for giving this to me,” she told Kaspar.
“What happened to the handsome man? Why aren’t you with him anymore?”
Her fingers squeezed the edges as she bowed her head.
“He’s... somewhere else.”
“Oh.”
“Will you promise me that you’ll never tell anyone what you read? That you’ll take it to your grave?”
The boy shuddered, and Seraphina cursed herself silently. She shouldn’t have said that. It was insensitive of her when someone died every day, when his own mother was lying in a hospital bed, when he and his brother were covered in purple spots.
“I swear it,” he whispered.
“Thank you. I will never forget you, Kaspar, and what you did for me.”
“It was nothing at all, Miss. I’m sorry I didn’t find it in time before you left. I would’ve returned it then and never read it.”
“It’s all right. You did no harm.”
“I... I truly hope so...”
Before Seraphina could wonder about the hesitation in his voice, his father came with a basket of food he’d prepared for her and Rune. Kaspar jumped to his feet on his arrival.
“Have you fed the chickens?” his father asked him.
“No, I was going now.” With that, he rushed out into the cold to continue his daily chores.
Peter shook his head. “Boys.”
“You’re doing a great job with them.”
“They need their mother.”
Seraphina got the hint. She thanked him for the food and made her way back to the church. Before entering, she set the basket on the steps and tucked Matteo’s journal into one of the inner pockets of her cloak. It fit perfectly, and when she buttoned up the cloak, she felt it rest against her ribs.