‘It’s frugal.’
I sighed, pushing the map aside and grabbing meteorology reports from the last ten years.
The tables around us were packed with silent clerks, busily scratching notes – in large print as per my orders. A huge map lay on the floor, drawn out by a cartographer who’d taken far too long on the minor isles, till I’d lost my temper and dismissed him. In all fairness, he was the only assistant I’d sacked. For me, only losing one in two weeks was some sort of record.
Each day, I waited, eager for the evenings, when the lamps burned low and the assistants drifted from the library. Stretching hunched muscles, Matthias and I sat on the floor. We’d pick at the plate of cold food he’d bring, Matthias trying his hardest to stop Pablo stealing any – and the little lines in his forehead each time he failed. I smirked at the memory of Matthias trying to grab the wolf’s tail.
Then, when it was time for us to turn in, he’d walk me to my chambers, kiss me on the cheek and leave me standing with my back to the door, desperate to call his name.
‘Sorrow?’
I looked up, Skye’s tone bringing me back to my task.
‘I think…I think you’ve marked at least two of these sightings in the wrong place.’
‘Are you suggesting I’ve made a mistake?’ I raised a brow over my glasses.
Skye tilted her head, before blowing out a long breath.
‘Look.’ She put my notebook in my hands, and I lifted it high, angling it towards my stronger eye. ‘You’ve written about a swarm of diafol rats, here, at East Bayside.’ She pointed to the map. Sure enough, the spot she indicated lacked any mark. Placing the notebook between us, I knelt down on the edges of the map, fighting the urge to kick it all away. How many of these locations had I mapped wrong?
‘Shit. We’ll have to start all over again!’ I winced as the pain crashed through my brain. All that time Enfys had bought us. Lost.
‘Well,’ Skye said, reaching to another side of the map by Asmar’s border and picking up the little toy house marking a site, ‘I’ve looked through twice now, and there’s nothing in West Banside, but this is here.’
She picked up the misplaced piece and popped it down on the map. Correctly, I conceded. I stood, circling the map, my pulse spiking higher with each step.
‘You said I messed up two?’
‘Not messed up?—’
‘I fucked up, Skye. Show me where I made the mistakes…please.’
I’d messed up Mount Baltin and Mount Salt. The spots marring my vision often caused letters to swirl and merge, and I cursed my stubbornness. How bad would it be to get someone to double check? I circled again. Pablo prowled forward, sniffing the edges of the map before pacing with me. There was a very obvious pattern developing, and a thrill pulsed through my veins. I squinted at Skye who cross-referenced locations from the notebooks, peering at the map.
‘What’s here? This lake and these cliffs?’
A thrill ran through me.Don’t get carried away, Sorrow. Not yet.
‘Graig Du, that’s the cliff face. I haven’t come across it in the notes.’ She started flipping through the pages.
‘Doesn’t that mean black cliffs in the old tongue?’
Skye gave a non-committed grunt. The wolf placed his paw on the map, lowering his head before looking back at me.
‘Why’s it called that? Please, for the love of Evella tell me it’s because nothing grows there.’
‘I imagine so.’ Skye straightened. ‘Oh Gods, Sorrow and the lake.’ She raced over to another table, taking a book from a clerk’s hands and racing back. ‘I remember as a child, mother telling us about the emptiness of the Shadow Lake. It horrified me. The idea nothing existed there.’
I stood back, blinking away the swirls. ‘Tell me you see it too?’
Skye stood next to me; her hand clutched my shaking arm.
‘The cliffs… they’re an…’
‘Epicentre,’ I finished. ‘Ithasto be a Vyrium site. Here, in Asmar.’
Sure enough, the little ornaments and trinkets we’d been using to mark anything unusual formed concentric circles, all facing the cliffs – Graig Du.
