Rune... She couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Before she knew it, she was singing the song he’d sung to her when she was bleeding and in pain, her own womanly body having betrayed her. The day he’d left the cell to be interrogated by the sergeant, she’d discovered the rest of it carved on the wall. Two more stanzas added to the first two he’d sung to her over and over, until she learned them by heart.
His voice had been low and vibrating. Hers was soft, high, and it swept over the market as more people halted what they were doing to listen to her.
“No gate to cross into sun-kissed yards bright.
No doors to slip through for a ghost astray,
No herbs, no elixirs; the grim dismay.
Of a grand bell, its ropes by frost made white.
No clean grave awaits where you can just lie.
Black funeral feasts and services mean,
Hideous priests, churches dirty and keen.
No peaceful winters where you can just die.
Oh, demons void of hell, Gods void of sky…
Mmm, demons void of hell, Gods void of sky…
No clean grave awaits where you can just lie…
No peaceful winters where you can just die…”
One would think the religious people of Ingolstadt, most purists and doctrinists if they had any allegiance to the Order, would find it blasphemous. Unless the dark times they all lived had convinced them of the truth.
Seraphina felt snowflakes land on her hands, cupped in her lap to catch the coins. An early winter this year as well. She knew half the people in the market square were thinking of graves.
Chapter Fourteen
The city invented its own rumors about what went on behind those walls.
The abandoned building was close to the western gate. Seraphina chose it because the streets here were quieter than near the market or the university quarter.
The French demolition had left its mark on this part of the city – empty lots where fortress buildings once stood, a boarded-up tavern that never reopened, a warehouse with half its roof caved in. Most travelers who came through the gate headed straight for the town center, and other vagrants who needed a place to sleep preferred the center as well, where a church or a charity might take pity on them and offer a blanket or a hot meal.
With the money she’d made singing, Seraphina had bought bread, some hard cheese, a small jar of plum jam, and an apple. A feast, if she’d ever had one. She’d acquired a tinder box, too.
First, she inspected the building. It had once been a chandler’s shop, and the front room still smelled faintly of tallow and old wax. The floorboards creaked under her feet. She moved carefully, using her stick to map the space. There was a counter along one wall, warped and splintered. Behind it, a doorway led to a back room where the chandler must have worked. The air was damper here. She pulled her hood down and craned her neck toward the ceiling. The snowflakes that landed on her cheeks told her the roof had gaps. She wrinkled her nose and kept moving.
A narrow hallway ran along the side of the building, and at the end of it was a small storage room. The door hung crooked on its hinges, but the space inside was dry. She tilted her head back, checking the ceiling. Solid, no holes, and no wet patches on the floor. There was a narrow window, shuttered and nailed closed, but with enough gaps in the wood to let in air. It would do.
She set her food down in a corner, wrapped in a cloth the cheese vendor had been kind enough to give her, then went back to the front room and gathered pieces of furniture she could use to make a fire. It meant smoke and light, which would give away her position, but also warmth. She was frozen to the bone, so she would risk it. Hopefully, everyone was huddled around stoves and under blankets on this cold night, and no one would notice.
Back in the storage room, she struck flint to tinder and coaxed a small flame to life, feeding it carefully. The fire stayed small, just enough to warm her hands. She spread out her feast and ate slowly, enjoying every bite, then spent another hour listening to the crackling of the feeble flames.
Seraphina missed him. Around this time of night, he would stroke her long hair and sing in his grave voice lyrics he’d written himself. She would listen and feel the tension leave her body. Her mind would drift, and when he lay down with his back to hers, she’d feel warm and less scared. Now she was fighting sleep because she was terrified of what tomorrow would bring. Exhaustion won, and she curled up on her side.
The streets were covered in a thin layer of snow when she crawled out of her hiding spot in the morning. It crunched under her boots but soon turned to sludge as she approached the busier parts. She didn’t have a plan exactly, but she thought it was worth hovering near the academy for a while, maybe walking along its walls for old times’ sake.
The academy sat on the highest hill in the city, a complex of dark towers and weathered buildings made from stone that centuries of rain and smoke had stained almost black. A steep wall surrounded the entire place, and crows lived on the rooftops and among gargoyles, their cries carrying down to the streets below. Most people called it the Old University, though its real name was Krähenstein, Academy of Relics.
It had been founded by the Sarumite Order centuries ago and was now the most prestigious relic academy in all of Europe. Inside those walls, relics were authenticated, tested, catalogued, and conserved. The academy had a museum that opened to the public on certain days and sometimes offered lectures that anyone could attend. Sixteen old families from across Europe sat on its board, and choosing a new headmaster was as serious a matter as choosing the Pope. From its position on the hill, the academy overlooked the Danube River, and at night, when lamps burned in its windows, the city invented its own rumors about what went on behind those walls.
