Salivin breathed in the smell of the brown paper wrapped around the letter.
Home.
It was a foolish thing to do.
He glanced around the shared dormitory.
The other pallets lay empty. Morning prayers had already begun, and the halls beyond carried the distant murmur of voices rising and falling as one. He had only moments.
Breaking the seal, he unfolded the letter with a care usually reserved for holy texts.
His eyes skimmed the familiar hand.
...the old rose has flowered again...
A smile escaped him before he realised it.
He pictured the tiny cottage at the edge of the village and an old woman bent over a single rose bush that refused to surrender to winter. Every spring she feared it had died. Every summer she celebrated its return as though witnessing a miracle.
Heavy footsteps echoed along the corridor.
Salivin folded the letter too quickly, crumpling one corner. He winced and smoothed the crease with his thumb before dropping to one knee beside his pallet.
His fingernail found the edge of a loose stone.
Beneath it lay a neat bundle of letters bound with faded string. The oldest had grown soft where they had been unfolded and read until the fibres themselves seemed tired.
He placed the newest gently on top.
No inquisitor was permitted reminders of the life that had come before the Order.
The stone settled back into place with a dull scrape.
“Salivin.”
The shout carried down the corridor.
He rose, belted on the serrated blade that marked his office and fastened the iron discs beneath his collar. The smile left him. He pulled the familiar scowl across his face as though it were another piece of his uniform.
The man who stepped from the dormitory was every inch an inquisitor.
The man beneath the loose floor stone was simply a son.
The leather on Salivin’s boots looked worn. He noticed it while standing before the desk of Chief Inquisitor Mortant Vale.
“You were told...” Vale’s voice came from behind a sheet of parchment. “...to deal with the old monk.”
“I did.”
The parchment lowered.
“Did you?”
Vale studied him for a long moment before rising. He crossed to the hearth, lifted the poker and stirred the dying coals until a small flame breathed back into life.
“There,” he said. “Alive.”
Salivin said nothing.
Vale loosened the front of his breeches and urinated into the fire.
The flames hissed. Steam rose. The last glow disappeared beneath blackened ash.
Vale fastened himself without hurry.
“Now it is dealt with.”
His eyes fixed on Salivin.
“You understand?”
Salivin kept his face still.
Brother Edren had tended the shrine in his mother’s village since before Salivin could walk. Three nights earlier, Salivin had paid a courier to carry a message south.
It is time to move on.
“Yes, Chief Inquisitor.”
Vale watched him another moment, then waved him away.
The heat of the forge seemed to find every part of Salivin’s face. It was not a place he enjoyed.
His mouth twitched at the blacksmith’s scream.
An initiate stood over the man with a hammer in hand, staring at the fingers curled against the anvil.
“Really?” Salivin said. “There are other ways to explain the error of someone’s ways. He will not forge for us for months now.”
The initiate looked towards him.
“But he will not forget the message.”
Salivin gritted his teeth.
“Carry on.”
He turned and walked from the forge.
Outside, the rain felt cool against his skin. It washed away the closeness of the fire and loosened the tightness in his chest.
He did not allow himself to smile.
A second cry came from the forge.
Then a third.
Salivin turned.
He strode back inside and caught the initiate’s arm halfway through the fourth blow.
“Enough.”
The young man stared at him.
“He understands the message,” Salivin said. “And we still require working blacksmiths.”
He took the hammer and threw it onto the floor. Iron struck stone with a crack.
Before the initiate could argue, Salivin seized him by the shoulder and drove him towards the door.
Through the pain of his mangled hand, the blacksmith raised his head and met the inquisitor’s eyes.
Salivin gave him nothing. No kindness. No apology.
He shoved the initiate out into the rain and followed.
Something slipped from beneath his cloak and rolled across the forge floor.
A small round jar of ointment.
That night Salivin lay with one boot against the cold grey stone beside his pallet, almost in hope some goodness might seep up through it.
He no longer knew when his faith had begun to falter.
Perhaps it had always been cracked.
He had heard of another inquisitor once. Ravi. A chief inquisitor cast out for leaving the Order. No one spoke of why. No one dared.
Salivin thought he knew.
A snore rolled across the dormitory. He found a pebble someone had carried in on a boot and flicked it towards the sound. The sleeper snorted and rolled over.
Salivin closed his eyes.
Sleep took him to a small house, a weathered fence and a red rose heavy with bloom. One clear drop of rain clung to a petal.
The crack across his cheek tore him from it.
His eyes opened to the blaze of Vale’s hearth.
“I warned you,” Vale said. “And now I hear yet more tales of your kindness.”
“It was not kindness. It was practicality. We require blacksmiths who can still work.”
“What we require is initiates who understand our way.”
Vale was shaking. A fleck of white spittle struck the desk.
Salivin drew breath.
“May I-”
“No. You may not. I know your point of view, and you walk a very fine line. Get out.”
Salivin bowed his head just enough to satisfy protocol and left.
Outside stood the initiate from the forge.
“The Chief put you in your place then?”
Salivin walked past him.
One step.
Two.
He stopped.
Without warning he turned, seized the initiate by the throat and drove him against the wall. His dagger appeared so quickly the young man barely saw it. The point rested a hair’s breadth from his eye.
Vale stood in the doorway, one hand on his hilt.
“You do not question your master’s orders,” Salivin said.
The initiate nodded desperately.
“You carry them out.”
The blade did not move.
“But remember this. There is a difference between punishment and waste.”
His grip tightened.
“You crippled a blacksmith. We need blacksmiths.”
Only then did Salivin lower the dagger.
The initiate slid down the wall, rubbing at his throat.
Behind them, Vale smiled.
He believed Salivin had taught obedience.
The initiate had learned something else entirely.
The pale flesh above Reiner’s faded red dress left little doubt about her trade. Once, she had commanded a bat. These days, a jat bought food and a roof.
Salivin kept his voice low.
“Look, Reiner. I have told you before. Not now. After sundown.”
“I know, but I’m hungry and the rent is due.”
“I know.”
At the far end of the alley, dark eyes watched. A pencil moved across paper.
Reiner caught Salivin’s hand.
“You are the only good one.”
He pulled free.
“No. Just go.”
He shoved her hard enough to make the gesture convincing.
She hurried away and joined two other women dressed much as she was. One looked towards Salivin. Reiner shook her head.
The watcher had gone.
Salivin continued his rounds.
Near the end of the street, a small house stood behind a weathered fence. A bright red rose grew in its garden, made almost luminous by the sinking sun. A figure watched from the window.
Salivin did not stop.
Woodsmoke drifted from the chimney, carrying with it something his memory insisted belonged to another garden.
“I have been watching you.”
Salivin turned.
The initiate from the forge stood behind him.
“Initiate,” Salivin said.
“You keep poor company.” The younger man glanced back towards the alley.
“You enjoy dealing in pain, don’t you?” Salivin asked.
The initiate smiled.
“I love the Order. No. I am the Order.”
Salivin walked towards him. For the first time, the young man’s confidence faltered.
Salivin placed an arm around his shoulders, and together they walked as though they were old comrades sharing some private confidence.
“I think you may be right,” Salivin said. “You are the Order.”
The initiate relaxed.
They walked on a few paces. Everything Salivin had done until now could be explained away if it came to it. A word paid to a courier. A jar dropped in a forge. Small things, deniable things, the kind a man can carry quietly for years.
He thought of the loose stone in the dormitory floor.
He did not let himself finish the thought.
“I am not sure I can change that in one such as yourself.”
The knife entered beneath his arm.
His breath caught.
Salivin held him upright as his legs failed.
“There is a difference,” he said, “between punishment and waste.”
They were two streets from the river. Salivin carried him into a narrow alley and left him among the refuse.
He did not see the old woman standing beneath the eaves opposite.
She had been minding her own affairs.
Now she had seen everything.
Vale paced before the assembled ranks.
Every inquisitor and initiate stood to attention in the rain, boots sinking slowly into the churned mud of the square.
“One of ours is missing.”
Vale stopped.
“He slipped out without orders. On his own accord.”
He let the words settle.
“His own accord,” he repeated. “As though he possesses such a thing.”
No one moved.
“We will find him.”
His gaze settled on Salivin.
Salivin returned it with the practised emptiness expected of his office.
Later, a messenger found him.
“You are wanted in his office.”
Vale stood behind the desk, shuffling parchments without reading them.
“You frightened the shit out of him, didn’t you? That little weasel has run.”
“I-”
“Never mind. Find him or don’t. He is dead to me now. Understand?”
Salivin nodded.
“Dead,” Vale repeated.
“Yes, Chief Inquisitor.”
“Get out.”
Salivin turned.
“Dead, Salivin.”
The word followed him into the corridor.
Salivin put one foot before the other.
And breathed.
Rain struck the river, each drop sending small circles across the surface.
The body had been found that morning by a dog worrying something in the reeds.
There was little left of the face.
Vale studied the corpse. Beside him stood two inquisitors, Salivin among them, and four initiates.
“AWOL means absent without leave,” he said. “There is no absence from the eyes of Auraeth.”
His gaze settled on the initiates.
“Remember that.”
He turned to Salivin and motioned with two fingers.
“Walk.”
The pair moved away from the others, boots sinking into the soaked earth.
“Well done,” Vale said quietly.
Salivin neither slowed nor answered.
“Whatever you said to him frightened the little weasel enough to run.”
Still Salivin remained silent.
Vale gave a short grunt.
“Fear is a useful teacher.”
They reached the Order House. Vale pushed open the door to his office and disappeared inside.
A small scrap of paper lay upon his desk.
He picked it up.
His eyes lingered over the hurried handwriting for only a moment.
Then he folded it once.
Without another thought, he dropped it into the fire.
The paper curled, blackened and vanished among the embers.
Two guards waited outside.
Vale opened the door.
“Clear his room.”
The dormitory was empty when he reached it.
Evening prayers had begun without him. The murmur carried through the walls, rising and falling as one, and no one had come to ask why his voice was not among them.
Salivin stood a while in the doorway.
Then he crossed to his pallet and knelt, as a man might kneel to pray, and worked his fingernail into the edge of the loose stone.
The bundle lay where it had always lain. He lifted it out and held it, and the string felt thinner than he remembered, worn soft by his own hands.
He could take them. He could be through the west gate before prayers ended and past the tithe villages by morning, and they would have a room to clear and nothing in it.
He read none of them. He knew them all.
If he took them, they would know what he had been. If he left them, they would find them soon enough.
He set the bundle back into the dark and pressed the stone down with the heel of his hand.
Then he lay on his pallet with one boot against the cold grey stone, and waited for the prayers to end.
Boots sounded in the corridor.
More than one pair.
Salivin closed his eyes and pulled the familiar scowl across his face, as though it were another piece of his uniform.
Daylight reached the letters before the hands did.
“Here... look at this.”
One of the guards held up a bundle tied with faded string.
“What is it?”
“No idea.”
He untied the ribbon and frowned at the neat handwriting.
“Doesn’t look right.”
“The Chief should see it.”
The second guard shrugged.
“Nah.”
He held the letters over the brazier.
“They’re only paper.”
The ribbon caught first.
Then the corners curled.
Years of harvests.
Winter coughs.
Broken fences.
One stubborn rose.
All of it lifted away as ash.
A man with both hands wrapped in old cloth stood beside a fresh mound of earth just beyond the north road.
He removed the cap from a small earthenware jar and placed it carefully upon the mound.
Not long afterwards a monk arrived, robes stained by weeks of travel.
His cough echoed across the empty hill.
The blacksmith nodded once.
The monk returned it.
Neither spoke.
Three women climbed the rise together.
The first carried herself with quiet confidence despite the life she led.
She recognised the two men immediately.
They recognised her.
Again, no words were needed.
For a while they simply stood around the fresh earth, each alone with their thoughts.
Before leaving, the blacksmith pressed the small jar gently into the soil.
The monk took the scrap of paper from inside his sleeve and pushed it deep beneath the mound with the end of his staff.
He nodded to the women before following the blacksmith down the hill.
The three women remained a little longer.
Finally the eldest smiled sadly.
“The only good one.”
She blew a kiss towards the mound.
Then she turned and led the others away.
Halfway down the hill they passed an old woman making her slow journey upwards.
One foot dragged slightly behind the other.
Her walking stick was little more than a crooked branch worn smooth by years of use.
Her clothes were plain and weathered, yet she carried herself with quiet dignity.
In one hand she held a single long-stemmed red rose.
Beautiful in its bloom.
Upon one velvet petal rested a single drop of water.