The desk itself was in disarray, its drawers pulled open and papers scattered. Whoever had searched it had been thorough but not careful. They were looking for something specific, and they hadn’t worried about hiding their presence.
“Here,” the Baroness said, her voice tight.
She was kneeling beside the desk, her fingers tracing something carved into the wooden leg. I crouched beside her and looked.
A spearhead.
This one was crude and carved with what looked like a knife point. I didn’t think it was the work of the killers.
It was the work of the victim.
“He knew they were coming,” Thomas said, kneeling on the Baroness’s other side. “He left a message.”
“Or a warning.” The Baroness stood, her expression troubled. “He wanted someone to know who had killed him. He wantedmeto know.”
Father Eberhard had remained outside the cordoned area, watching us with an expression of profound unease. “What did you find?”
The Baroness hesitated. I could see her weighing how much to reveal, how much this holy man needed to know about the unholy forces that had invaded his sanctuary.
“It is the mark of an old enemy,” she said finally. “One I had hoped was dead and buried.”
“An enemy of the Church?”
“An enemy of everything good, Father. That is all I can tell you.”
The Abbot crossed himself.
Thomas had moved away from the desk and was examining the walls with careful attention. After a moment, he stopped, his fingers resting on a section of stone that looked identical to every other in the room.
“Here,” he said. “There’s a seam.”
He pressed, and something clicked. A section of wall swung inward, revealing a narrow passage that disappeared into darkness.
“That is how they escaped,” Father Eberhard breathed. “We found it open the morning after. We had no idea it existed.”
Thomas produced a flashlight from his coat and shone it into the passage. The beam revealed rough stone walls, a floor thick with dust, and footprints—multiple sets, leading away into the blackness.
“It goes down,” I said. “Toward the valley, probably. I would guess it emerges somewhere in the forest.”
“A smuggler’s route,” the Baroness murmured. “Or a monk’s escape, in less enlightened times.” She turned to Father Eberhard. “You truly did not know of this passage?”
“None. Brother Aldric never mentioned it.” He paused. “He had been studying some of our oldest documents. Perhaps he found something.”
“Perhaps he did.” The Baroness’s voice was grim. “And perhaps that got him killed.”
I left Thomas to examine the passage and turned my attention to the desk. The drawers had been indeed emptied, but I had learned long ago that people who searched in haste often missed things. I ran my fingers along the underside of each drawer, checking for false bottoms, hidden compartments, or anything that might have escaped notice.
In the third drawer, I found it.
A small catch, barely perceptible, that released a thin panel at the back of the drawer. Behind it was a narrow space. In that space, a single sheet of paper, folded twice and pressed flat.
“Thomas. Baroness.”
They came to my side as I unfolded the paper. It was covered in cramped handwriting, the ink faded, the words hurried and uneven. It appeared to be the work of a man racing against time he knew he didn’t have.
Most of the letter was incomplete, covered in fragments of sentences, half-formed thoughts, and names I didn’t recognize, but near the bottom, circled twice in darker ink, were two phrases that made my blood run cold:
The Chamber Session. February 15th.
