In the morning, Seraphina gave the two Lustral Wheels to Willa, who, with the help of Peter, lowered them into the churchyard well and the market well. They were supposed to leave them there for a day and a night. Once that was done, Seraphina and Rune retreated to their room and slept. They woke up late at night and found Peter in the tavern’s common room, stoking the fire.
“The boys are asleep,” he said, “But I was tossing and turning, and I gave up. Join me. I’ll bring us something to eat.”
They sat close to the fire and talked. When Peter left to bring beer, Rune leaned into Seraphina and whispered in her ear that the tavern keeper was restless, scratching the purple spots on the backs of his hands, and sweating profusely. He was worried about his wife, who’d fallen into a coma a few hours before, but he was also getting worse himself.
The hospital had lost another patient today, and the body was waiting in the dead house with the others. The earth was too frozen to dig, and it had been for a week.The dead house stood behind the church, a windowless stone vault where coffins were stacked on shelves during winter months. When the ground froze solid, there was nowhere else to put the dead.
Peter came with cups of warm beer, spiced with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Seraphina enjoyed the way the flavoreddrink slid down her throat and warmed her bones. She was well-rested and hopeful about the Lustral Wheels working, her stomach was full, and the beer made her fingers and toes tingle. All this made the wind howling at the windows sound like less of a threat.
“I’m glad Saint Nikolaus’ bone turned out to be useful,” Peter said. “Too bad the other relics in Langenbach were stolen during the raids. The Church of Saint Mary had a greater relic. Now the church is in ruins and the relic is gone. And the mansion on the hill... Did you see it? It’s a hunting lodge that belonged to a wealthy family from Munich, the Von Rothenfelds. When the Blasphemer took over the royal court in Munich, the Von Rothenfelds took their hereditary relics and retreated to their hunting lodge here. At least that’s what I heard, that they had hereditary relics. A lot of good that did them... The Blasphemer still got his hands on their relics when his soldiers raided the mansion and killed them all.”
“The Von Rothenfelds are dead?” asked Seraphina.
“Yes. We buried them after the resistance took the town back. We buried a lot of people last summer. And we haven’t stopped burying people since then.”
They finished the beer, then Seraphina asked if they could have some hot water for a bath. Peter heated two buckets and brought a small tub into their room.
There was no screen to separate the tub from the rest of the room, but Rune had gotten used to their intimacy in the past two weeks, and even if he still looked away when she discarded her clothes and stepped into the tub, he wasn’t tense and skittish anymore. Seraphina rested her head against the edge. The only things she hadn’t removed were her scarf and the strip of fabric from Rune’s shirt that she wore around her wrist. She played with it absentmindedly as she thought about what Peter had said.
“I remember coming across the name Von Rothenfeld in the academy ledgers,” she told Rune. “Peter is right, they owned a few relics. If I remember well, they had five lesser relics and three greater ones. They were one of the collector families. Their ancestors had dedicated themselves to finding genuine relics and acquiring them at significant prices, and they continued that tradition.”
“All lost now,”Rune said.He was sitting at the little table near the window, scribbling on a piece of paper.
The only light in the room came from a candle, and Seraphina dared to remove her scarf and wash her face quickly.
“I wonder if they might’ve had an apex relic they didn’t declare,” she said. “Collectors will usually declare all their other relics, so they look like they’re being transparent, while they hide the fact that they own apex relics too.”
“In that case, the loss is even greater,” Rune said.
“Maybe. Maybe not. I propose we visit the hunting lodge and take a look, see if we find anything. People like the Von Rothenfelds would have been really good at hiding their most prized possessions. So good that basic soldiers with no relic experience wouldn’t know how to find them.”
“If that’s what you wish...”
Seraphina groaned. He wasn’t really paying attention to her, writing furiously on that piece of paper and mouthing words to himself and humming. He was probably composing a new poem or song, and when he was so absorbed by it, she had no way of getting through to him. She knew that once he was done, the scrap of paper would be folded and join the other folded scraps of paper that padded the pockets of his cloak.
Rune took a bath after her, then they slept until morning, recuperating the sleep lost while fixing, undoing, and redoing lattices. It still nagged at Seraphina that Rune was capable of things only a master weaver would be, and that he couldn’t tellher how he’d learned or knew, but she couldn’t deny that these past few days, she’d felt useful. She hadn’t touched a single bone shard in two years, and she’d been grateful to confirm her fingers still found their way around them. Even without her sight, she’d been able to follow Rune’s instructions and prepare the shards for him.
The next day, they knew the water in the two wells had been purified because it smelled like freshly picked flowers. The nurses were reluctant, the trauma of having had the two wells poisoned for months not easy to shake, but Rune insisted the water was good to drink, and one of the patients that was still conscious offered to be the first to try it. When his fever broke an hour later, they had their proof: the purified water was an antidote to the bone fever.
Seraphina and Rune helped Katharina and Barbara give it to their patients, having to pour it carefully down the throats of those who were in a coma. They drew buckets out of the wells and placed them on the church’s steps, and called everyone out of their houses to come, bring cups, and drink. By sunset, the patients that had been asleep started waking up, and those who’d been delirious with fever were beginning to regain clarity.Seraphina and Rune moved between the beds, helping everyone drink more water. Peter was sitting next to his wife’s bed, holding her hand and crying as they talked quietly. The spots on Peter’s hands were already starting to fade.
“Miss...” A man pulled at Seraphina’s sleeve. “Miss, come closer, I need to tell you something.”
He was a young man in his twenties, with dark hair and sallow skin. Katharina had told her about him, like she’d told her about all their patients. He was a soldier who’d come to Langenbach a month ago, bringing back two men who’d fled the town, defying the quarantine orders. He’d chased them down and returned them in chains, but the men were in an advancedstage of sickness, and they soon died, not before passing on the bone fever to the unfortunate soldier. He’d been delirious when Seraphina and Rune arrived, then fell into a coma, but now he was feeling better after drinking a cup of purified water every hour.
Seraphina drew a chair close to his bed and bent over when the man urged. It seemed like he had something important to say, though Seraphina had no idea why he’d chosen her when he knew Katharina and Barbara better.
“The man you’re with,” he whispered close to her ear. His breath was cool on her skin, smelling of flowers. “I’ve seen one like him before.”
“What?”
“He wears his hood all the time, but I got glimpses of his face. The stitches and uneven patches of skin... I’ve seen them before.”
Seraphina wanted to pull away. She didn’t want to hear what the man had to say, but at the same time, maybe it was better if she did. All these people who were looking at Rune and judging him for his physical appearance were wrong. First Briar, and now this soldier who was skin and bone, and Rune had healed and literally brought back from the land of the dead. What right did they have to say bad things about the only honest, kind man Seraphina had met in her life?
“This creature is different. He has black hair and blue eyes. The one I saw when I was fighting at the front line was taller than him and bigger. He had long white hair and golden eyes. He wore no shirt, only trousers and boots, and I saw with my own eyes how lead balls penetrated his flesh and did nothing to bring him down. Cannon fire did not tear him apart. Canister shot hit him, he fell to the ground, and within minutes, he was back on his feet and advancing toward us. He wreaked havoc among our company, ripped out men’s limbs with his bare hands, snappedtheir necks and pulled them to pieces. We lost a town west of Langenbach because of this one creature that couldn’t be stopped. We were forced to retreat, there was no other way. He was killing us one by one, reducing bodies to broken bones and tattered flesh, bathing the earth in blood.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She waited a moment before she added: “You are wrong, though. Rune is nothing like you described.” The soldier wanted to say something, but Seraphina rose to her feet. “And please stop calling him a creature. He saved your life.”
