Chapter 25 – — Professor Bale, Lecture Notes #2
“I know what Ashwell sent you for.” Ostric eyes us. “You’ll sleep in the side chamber. There’s only one bed, but I’m sure you’ll make do. The fissure is past the lake. You won’t need a map.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“You’ll probably hear it before you see it.”
“Hear it how?”
“There’s food on the table,” Ostric says, turning away like he didn’t hear me at all.
“Bread mostly. Don’t eat the stew. I was distracted when I made it.
” He crosses to the shelves and pulls down one of the ledgers without looking at the numbering.
“Tomorrow, you’ll walk to the fissure and make your observations.
The night after, you’ll do the same. If anything comes through, you handle it.
If nothing comes through, document the quiet. Both are data.”
“And if we need you?” Draven asks.
“I’ll be here or above.” He gestures at the spiral staircase. “I watch from the tower most nights. The seam is quieter than it used to be, but if there’s a problem, you’ll hear the bell.”
Ostric proceeds toward a small door at the back of the nave with the ledger under his arm. He turns and looks at me. “Miss Rose.”
“Yes?”
“Your hands.”
I look down. My fingers are red and stiff, and I hadn’t realized they were shaking until he said so, and now that he has, they won’t stop.
“Yes?”
“Keep them warm tonight. The cold doesn’t help.”
He drifts through the small door, and we’re alone in the nave. I walk over to the fire and kneel down next to Poppy, holding my hands out to get warm. They start to burn as my fingers defrost.
“What is this place?” I say quietly.
“Older than the academies. Older than the kingdoms.”
“You’ve been somewhere like this before.”
He glances around. “There are fewer of these than there used to be.”
I wait, but he doesn’t elaborate.
“What is a seamkeeper exactly? He gave me the creeps.” I blow into my hands then rub them together in front of the fire again. He spoke about my hands shaking like he knows I have trouble with them. Or I’m reading too much into it. Either way, this entire place gives me the creeps.
Draven takes off our pack and sits at the table, glancing down at the maps spread across it.
“An order. Very old, older than the throne, older than anything that matters politically, which is probably why nothing else wants to remember them. They tend to the tears in the earth. Fissures that don’t heal, the fixed ones, usually have a seamkeeper post nearby.
They watch what comes through. They write it down and burn what dies. ”
“That’s it?”
“That’s most of it. They also remember things.
There’s a lot of history nobody wants in the official ledgers.
” He reaches out and straightens one of the four candles a quarter inch, as if he can’t help himself.
“They don’t belong to anyone. That’s why they’re barely funded.
There are less than a dozen of them left across Valen but there used to be over a hundred. ”
“And the mark on his wrist?”
“They make it themselves when they take their vows.” He pushes a stray strand of hair from his face. “A seam, because that’s what their life revolves around.”
I stand and move to sit across from him. “But what’s the point in all of it? They burn bodies and record what they see?”
“Without those records, nobody knows what’s coming until it’s already here.
” He meets my eyes. “That’s the point. They’ve been recording data and finding patterns as old as time itself.
The Obsidian Throne deemed them useless and stopped funding them, but I don’t think that was a smart choice.
How do we change anything without knowing our history? ”
He shrugs and takes a bite of bread.
We. Not they. We.
I file it away and take a bit of crusty bread. I’m still chewing on a piece when someone knocks at the door.
Three sharp raps, hard enough that the sound cuts through the nave and makes Draven’s wolf lift his head from the hearth.
Draven is at the door before I’ve even swallowed, making me think he heard them coming before the knock. Must be nice having vampire hearing.
The man on the other side is wrapped in a coat that isn’t warm enough for the weather, and he’s gripping a boy by the wrist. The boy is small and silent, and his sleeve is dark with something that isn’t melted snow.
“The seamkeeper said—” The man stops when he sees me. His eyes move from my face to the Ashwell crest on my cloak and back again. “He said you were a healer.”
I set the bread down. “I’m a student.”
“He said you were a healer.”
Draven steps aside, and they come in.
The boy is quiet the way children become when they’ve already cried themselves out. His eyes find mine and stay there, wide and glassy, and I kneel in front of him in an instant.
“What happened?” I reach for the boy’s sleeve.
“An axe,” the father says. “He was helping me split wood, and it slipped.”
“Take a seat on the bench. I need to see it.”
He guides his son onto the bench, and I push the boy’s coat sleeve back. The wound on his forearm is deep and ragged, but it’s bleeding at a pace that means I have time, which means I can do this. It’s a clean gash from an axe and not a twisted creature, so no need to cut out any corruption.
“What’s his name?” I fold up the sleeve and pin it out of the way.
“Tomas.”
“Hi, Tomas.” I meet the boy’s emerald eyes. “I’m Maelis, and I’m going to clean this up. It’s going to hurt a little, but not as much as the axe did. Okay?”
He nods without making a sound.
“Can you tell me something about yourself while I work? Tell me about that goat outside.”
“She’s mean.” His voice is hoarse.
“Yeah, I got that impression.”