If Maeve had been writing to a fellow acolyte, their craft would have been written below their name. If anyone had thought to write to him during his years at the Abbey, it would’ve arrived labelledJude – illuminations, to mark his years learning the craft of embellishing manuscripts. A title that had been stripped from him the second he was shunted from their fold.
Unlike the letter he’d stolen from her bag, he didn’t hesitate to pull this one free of its envelope.
She’d written it – written abouthim. He had every right to look. He lined the bottom edge up neatly with the edge of his desk. He would read what she reported and decide where to go from there. Nothing rash. Nothing without thought.
Nodding to himself, Jude focused on the page and began to read.
Ezra,
I hope you’re doing well and the preparations for the winter intercession have not been too tiresome. I dearly hope to be home for it, especially if you are leading some of the hymns this year.
Jude rolled his eyes. She might as well get down and lick his boots herself at this rate.
Despite the rain, the journey went smoothly. I’ve started on the preliminary sketch for Jude’s icon and hope to begin the underpainting next week. He’s not been the easiest to work with so far, but I am confident I will have his icon ready for you before the end of the year.
In regards to my other task—
Jude is very isolated and appears markedly lonely, with little contact with life outside his home. The house contains no icons, no Abbey sigils or symbols, and no obvious signs of his ability. The housekeeper, a man called Elden, seems to remember little from his time before Jude, outside of a few years spent as a woodsman, though I am sure he is purposefully concealing things from me. I will do my best to find and relay more information on him and Jude.
While Jude’s daily routine holds little variety, he frequently disappears to a room he always keeps locked. I’m curious to discover what lies inside, as I fear it may be important. I aimto discover what’s inside it before my following report – hopefully, it holds answers to how he’s corrupting his magic.
The paper creased with the force of his grip. The magicJudecorrupted? Was that what they’d told her? That he had been the one to taint his abilities? Not the Abbey with their greedy fingers, their poisonous touch? Fury pulsed in his chest at the blatant lie. Somehow, they kept finding new and creative ways to surprise him.
He blew out a slow breath, forcing himself to keep reading. His eyes skimmed down the page. Her handwriting abruptly changed from even, albeit messy, penmanship to an outright scrawl. Ink splatters marred the page.
Jude shows a remarkable lack of respect towards the Abbey and the saints’ glorious magic, bordering on outright hatred. I’m more convinced than ever that he’s hiding something. I will report back within the week.
By the saints—
Maeve
Well.
Jude leaned back in his chair. So, his suspicions were correct. She was a spy, after all. He shouldn’t be surprised. Of course, her presence here would serve a dual purpose.
Iconographers were fundamental to the Abbey, perhaps even more so than just as artists. They would never force one away unless they were desperate… and they mustreallybe desperate to have an updated icon of him to choose Maeve, of all people. At her age, she would’ve completed all her training to be a fully fledged iconographer, and the Abbey didn’t have many of those. To send one all the way out here…
But why now? Had something changed to renew their interest in him?
His eyes returned to the page.
Jude is very isolated and appears markedly lonely.
He pushed to his feet and paced from one end of the room to the other. His lungs felt tight, his throat constricted. He yanked the collar of his jumper roughly to the side and peered down at the tattoo just below his left collarbone, tucked into the soft hollow where his shoulder met his chest. A vertical line bisected by three horizontal.
SAINT.
His first tattoo and the only one he hadn’t inked himself.
The memory of its inking was another that refused to leave. The hands holding him down, the burning pain. The praying and chanting and fevered voices—
Jude traced the symbol with shaking fingers and resisted the urge to get the supplies to push it deeper into his skin.
If he was lonely and isolated, it was because they made him so. If he was bitter, it wastheirdoing.
Instead, he reached beneath the lip of his desk for the tin box he kept wedged there, full of cigarettes he stole from Elden, the dried plant inside one he grew in their greenhouse. The flame from his match sent wavering pools of gold into the furthest reaches of his vision. He’d smoked regular cigarettes before, in a previous life where filching them from townspeople was the height of rebellion. Elden’s didn’t taste as he remembered, nor did the swirling wave he had come to associate with the herbal taste lend itself to tobacco or clove.
The pressure under his skin slowly receded, just as he had hoped.
