The eyes of a bone shard technician and the hands of a master weaver. Had he sewn lattices in here? She supposed it wouldn’t have been Quietus Nets and Anodyne Bands. Maybe not even Wards of Rebound. Those could be made by any senior journeyman weaver. No, the High Harvester must’ve made him copy his own dark patterns for lattices that crippled, manipulated, and poisoned. She thought about the Obedience Lattice, Falk Kühner’s prized invention, rejected by the academy board. She thought about the Pestilent Wheel that had killed hundreds in Langenbach. Who knew how many more twisted patterns the Harvester had created? One more wicked than the other. Had he made Rune weave them to deploy them on the battlefield?
Seraphina stood and approached the nearest wall. She didn’t expect to find anything, seeing how Rune had had access to paper and graphite pencils, but she ran her hands over the stone anyway, her fingertips pressing, searching. Nothing on the wall against which the table had sat. She walked along it, her boot caught in a soggy sheet of fabric crumpled on the floor, and she braced herself on the bedframe to stop from falling. The sheet once kicked into the corner, she stepped inside the bedframe and ran her palms over the wall above the bed.
There. Words carved into the stone.
“I struck a word with silence, bare and deep:
I keep her charmed, she grants me sleep.
I struck forever with the time I’ve lost:
I hide what remains, it spares me the cost.”
A sob tore from her throat. How could she have abandoned him? What was she doing here, still? Discovering him, his firstyears of life. She’d needed to know, so she’d come on instinct. The loose thread floating at the back of her mind connected her to him.
She stepped over the bedframe again, walked out of the cell, and reoriented herself back toward the stairs. The sound of footsteps and voices stopped her, making her press herself against the wall.
“Why are you doing this!” A young man’s voice, accented.
“Keep going.” The soldier from before.
Seraphina knew she was safe, so she went to meet them at the foot of the stairs. They soon came into view, dark shadows against gray. She smelled oil and smoke from a torch.
The soldier had his musket pointed at the young man’s back, and every time the man tried to turn around, he poked him with the bayonet.
“This is insane! They need me! Didn’t you hear that man?”
“Walk.”
“He was screaming, crying… He said his friend was dead. Maybe he’s not, and I can help. What’s down here that’s more important that another soldier’s life?”
His voice sounded familiar to Seraphina. She couldn’t place it when the man sounded near hysterical. The voice from her past had always been calm and measured.
The soldier stuck him again with the tip of the bayonet, and the young man grunted and walked forward. She felt it when his eyes landed on her and he froze.
“This is the ghoul,” the soldier said.
Seraphina heard the gnash of teeth coming from the naturalist. He didn’t comment, so she didn’t either.
“Give me the torch,” she said. “And put that away.”
The soldier lowered his musket and passed her the torch, then stood at attention.
“Now go to the western tower. There’s a man there. Bring him to me.” After another thought, she added: “He’s blind.”
“Yes.”
The soldier turned on his heel and disappeared up the stairs. Seraphina was left with the newcomer. She approached him, holding the torch up to her face, so he’d see.
“Seraphina Bell?”
She placed his voice this time, just by the way he said her name.
“Idris Gharbi?”
She’d spent days in Ingolstadt, stalking around Krähenstein Academy in hopes of hearing a familiar voice, someone she knew from her time studying and working there. And that voice had finally found her miles away, in the dungeons of a cursed castle.
Chapter Two
