Page 120 of Bone Year

The chapel is warmer than outside, though not by much. A hearth burns at the far end of what used to be a nave, the pews long since pushed against the walls and stacked into makeshift shelving. The shelves hold books that don’t appear to be religious texts but ledgers. Dozens of them. Hundreds maybe. Dark leather bindings, numbered on the spines in a hand that changes every few volumes as the recorders changed.

Where the altar should be, there’s a table. A long flat slab of dark stone with a few chairs around it, and someone has covered it in maps and candles and a scattering of tools. Forceps, a small scale, and sealed jars of what I hope is ink.

Four candles burn on the table arranged in a precise square. A staircase spirals up the inside of the wall toward what must be the bell tower. A heavier door set into the floor near the hearth leads somewhere down. I look at that door and decide immediately that I don’t want to know what’s under it.

Draven’s wolf pads past us, crosses the nave without ceremony, and drops in front of the hearth like he’s been here a hundred times. Poppy pokes her head out of my hood, takes one long look at the room, and hurries over to plop down next to the beast. I narrow my eyes at her, traitor.

“Seamkeeper Ostric,” the man says without extending a hand. I don’t take offense to it. I’ve never much liked shaking hands. “The last one at this post for the moment.”

“Maelis Rose,” I say. “This is⁠—”

“Draven Alucard. Ashwell sent us for the midterm assessment.”

“I know what Ashwell sent you for.” Ostric eyes us. “You’ll sleep in the side chamber. There’s only one bed, but I’m sure you’ll make do. The fissure is past the lake. You won’t need a map.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“You’ll probably hear it before you see it.”

“Hear it how?”

“There’s food on the table,” Ostric says, turning away like he didn’t hear me at all. “Bread mostly. Don’t eat the stew. I was distracted when I made it.” He crosses to the shelves and pulls down one of the ledgers without looking at the numbering. “Tomorrow, you’ll walk to the fissure and make your observations. The night after, you’ll do the same. If anything comes through, you handle it. If nothing comes through, document the quiet. Both are data.”

“And if we need you?” Draven asks.

“I’ll be here or above.” He gestures at the spiral staircase. “I watch from the tower most nights. The seam is quieter than it used to be, but if there’s a problem, you’ll hear the bell.”

Ostric proceeds toward a small door at the back of the nave with the ledger under his arm. He turns and looks at me. “Miss Rose.”

“Yes?”

“Your hands.”

I look down. My fingers are red and stiff, and I hadn’t realized they were shaking until he said so, and now that he has, they won’t stop.

“Yes?”

“Keep them warm tonight. The cold doesn’t help.”

He drifts through the small door, and we’re alone in the nave. I walk over to the fire and kneel down next to Poppy, holding my hands out to get warm. They start to burn as my fingers defrost.

“What is this place?” I say quietly.

“Older than the academies. Older than the kingdoms.”

“You’ve been somewhere like this before.”

He glances around. “There are fewer of these than there used to be.”

I wait, but he doesn’t elaborate.

“What is a seamkeeper exactly? He gave me the creeps.” I blow into my hands then rub them together in front of the fire again. He spoke about my hands shaking like he knows I have trouble with them. Or I’m reading too much into it. Either way, this entire place gives me the creeps.

Draven takes off our pack and sits at the table, glancing down at the maps spread across it. “An order. Very old, older than the throne, older than anything that matters politically, which is probably why nothing else wants to remember them. They tend to the tears in the earth. Fissures that don’t heal, the fixed ones, usually have a seamkeeper post nearby. They watch what comes through. They write it down and burn what dies.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s most of it. They also remember things. There’s a lot of history nobody wants in the official ledgers.” He reaches out and straightens one of the four candles a quarter inch, as if he can’t help himself. “They don’t belong to anyone. That’s why they’re barely funded. There are less than a dozen of them left across Valen but there used to be over a hundred.”