The decision, once made, settled in Cædmon's gut like a cold, heavy stone. It was not a choice born of courage or a thirst for justice, but of a grim necessity. The weaver Tomin's gemynd was a fractured, bleeding thing within him, a psychic wound that would not close so long as the truth of his end remained hidden. The missing book was a grain of sand in a flawless gear, a discordant note in a song of death, and its wrongness was an irritant Cædmon could not ignore. To find his own peace, he must first grant it to the dead. And so, he found himself walking.
His path did not lead him toward the warmth and life of The Oaken Shield, nor to the silent, ordered sanctuary of the Rūn-hord. It led him down, geographically and metaphorically, into the city's gut. He left the main thoroughfares, with their sturdy merchant houses and the distant, imposing silhouette of the High Keep, and descended into the warren of lanes and alleys that huddled in the city's damp, low-lying quarters near the river.
This was a different Dunholm. The air, thick with the ever-present mist from the river Flēot, carried different smells: not of baking bread and woodsmoke, but of coal dust, sour ale, unwashed bodies, and the underlying, sweetish scent of decay that clung to the river's banks. The buildings leaned against one another for support, their timber frames bowed with age and neglect, their upper stories looming over the narrow lanes and blocking out what little light the pewter sky had to offer.
Here, the people's reaction to him was different. The open fear and morbid curiosity of the upper districts were replaced by something more weary, more familiar. Death was no stranger in these lanes. It came in the form of river fever, of a brawl over a few pennies, of starvation during a hard winter. They saw Cædmon not as a terrifying omen, but as a grim functionary, a man whose trade, while unnerving, was simply one more part of the city's machinery of misery. They still averted their eyes, but their silence was sullen rather than shocked. He was a vulture, and they were merely tired of the sight of carrion.
His destination was a square, squat building of grey, river-slick stone, set apart from its neighbours by a small, moss-eaten courtyard. It had no windows on its ground floor, only a single, heavy door of iron-banded oak, painted a stark and solemn black. There was no sign, no heraldry. None was needed. Every soul in Dunholm, from the highest lord to the lowest beggar, knew the purpose of the Cold House. This was the city's morgue, the final waiting room for the unclaimed, the unknown, and the unhallowed dead. It was the dominion of the city's official Corpse-Warden, the last man to offer care to the city's forgotten.
Cædmon pushed open the heavy door, its hinges groaning in protest, and stepped inside. The change in atmosphere was immediate. The chaotic, desperate life of the streets was cut off, replaced by a profound, clinical silence. The air was cold, not with the damp chill of the river, but with the deep, penetrating cold of stone and something more. It was a clean cold, smelling faintly of carbolic soap, vinegar, and the unmistakable, sterile scent of death scrubbed clean.
The main receiving room was a large, vaulted chamber, its stone floor sloped gently toward a central drain. A row of long, slate-topped tables stood like silent pews in a ghastly church. Only one was occupied. A figure stood over it, his back to the door, humming a tuneless, droning melody that seemed to be absorbed by the stone walls.
The man was tall and impossibly thin, his form draped in a long, leather apron that had been scrubbed and oiled so many times it shone with a dull lustre. His grey hair was cut brutally short, accentuating the sharp, bird-like features of his face. As he worked, his long, spidery fingers moved with a delicate, unnerving precision. This was Master Hemlock, the Corpse-Warden of Dunholm, a man more comfortable with the dead than the living.
"The rain brings them in," Hemlock said, without turning around. His voice was a dry rustle, like leaves skittering across a tombstone. "It softens the ground. It makes the river give up its secrets. I have three floaters down from the North Gate since morning bell." He finally turned, his eyes, pale and watery, fixing on Cædmon. "But you are not here for a floater, are you, Echo-Walker? You walk a fresher path. The weaver, I presume."
"Master Hemlock," Cædmon said, his voice a low counterpoint to the warden's rustle. "You presume correctly."
Hemlock nodded slowly, wiping his long fingers on a clean cloth. "I heard the Stǣl-witan had their answer. A young fanatic with a pretty clasp. A simple matter, I was told."
"The mind's truth is often simple," Cædmon replied, choosing his words with care. "The truth of the flesh is sometimes more complex."
A flicker of understanding, or perhaps amusement, crossed Hemlock's gaunt features. He was one of the few men in the city who understood the distinction. He dealt in the physical facts of death: the snapped bone, the bruised flesh, the water in the lungs. He saw Cædmon not as a sorcerer, but as a fellow professional who simply worked with a different set of evidence.
"Ah," Hemlock rustled. "So the spirit and the body are not singing the same song. That is a dissonance I understand. Come."
He led Cædmon past the empty slate tables into a smaller, even colder chamber at the back. Here, three bodies lay upon stone plinths, each covered by a simple linen sheet. The air was colder here, the preservation runes carved into the floor and walls doing their work. Hemlock gestured to the slab in the center.
"Tomin Fenn," he said. "The Watch delivered him an hour past. I have not yet begun my preparations. I assumed, given the… clarity of your findings, that my own services would be rudimentary. A simple washing and stitching for the family."
"I need to see him," Cædmon said.
Hemlock gave him a long, searching look. "You have already walked his gemynd. What more could his shell have to tell you?"
"The mind can be a liar, Master Hemlock. Fear can build walls. Trauma can erase truth. But the body… the body rarely lies. It holds its secrets tight."
The Corpse-Warden considered this, then gave a slow, deliberate nod. "An interesting philosophy. Very well. But my house, my rules. You will not perform any of your… walkings… here. This is a place for the peace of the flesh, not the turmoil of the spirit. You may look. You may touch. But you will not Echo."
"That is my promise," Cædmon agreed. He had no desire to re-enter the weaver's shattered mind. The single journey had been more than enough.
With a practiced motion, Hemlock drew back the linen sheet.
The weaver looked smaller in death, diminished. The violence of his end was stark against the pale, bloodless canvas of his skin. The wounds on his chest were dark, gaping mouths, silenced in their screaming. His eyes were closed now, a small mercy granted by Hemlock.
Cædmon drew a deep breath and began his second examination of Tomin Fenn. This time, his tools were not magic, but his own sharp eyes and keen intellect. He started with the man's clothes, the simple tunic and breeches he had died in. He ran his fingers over the rough homespun cloth, feeling for anything out of place—a tear that was not from a blade, a stain that was not blood, a hidden pocket. He found nothing. The fabric was as simple and honest as the man who had worn it.
He moved to the body itself. Master Hemlock stood by, silent and observant, a fellow professional watching a master at his craft. Cædmon was meticulous. He examined the man's hands first. The weaver's fingers were calloused, the nails short and clean, save for one. Under the nail of his right index finger, there was a tiny splinter of dark wood.
"This wood," Cædmon said, pointing. "It is not from the loom, nor the floorboards."
Hemlock leaned in, his gaze sharp. "No," he agreed. "That is oak. Heartwood. Stained with something. Walnut oil, perhaps. From a piece of fine furniture. A chest, or a writing desk."
A detail. A small, strange detail. There was no fine furniture in Tomin's workshop. Cædmon filed it away.
He continued his search. He checked the man's hair, combing through the thin, grey strands with his fingers, looking for a foreign fiber, a stray thread, anything that did not belong. Nothing. He examined the soles of the man's worn leather shoes, finding only the dust and dirt of his own workshop.
He spent a long time on the wounds, much to Hemlock's silent approval. He noted the angle of the knife thrusts, the lack of defensive wounds on the man's arms, confirming the element of surprise and betrayal. He saw the bruising around the wounds, the silent testimony of the force used. But it told him nothing new. It only confirmed the violence he had already witnessed in the echo.
An hour passed. The only sounds were Cædmon's soft movements and the distant, rhythmic drip of water somewhere in the Cold House. He was beginning to think he had been wrong. The missing book must have been a confabulation, a phantom created by a dying mind. Perhaps the killer had simply taken it, a meaningless act in a moment of panic. Perhaps there was no deeper mystery. The thought was both a relief and a disappointment.
He was about to concede defeat when he looked again at the weaver's simple tunic. He had examined it for foreign objects, but he had not truly looked at it as a weaver's creation. His eyes traced the hem at the bottom of the garment. It was neatly stitched, the work of a master. But as he looked closer, something nagged at him. A faint, almost imperceptible irregularity in the pattern of the stitching.
His heart began to beat a little faster.
He leaned in, his face inches from the cloth. The main thread of the hem was a simple, undyed linen. But woven into it, so skillfully that it was almost invisible, was another thread. It was thinner, and it had a slightly different colour, the pale grey of a winter sky. It followed its own path, looping and knotting in a way that was not part of the standard stitch. It looked like decoration, but it was too subtle, too hidden.
"Master Hemlock," Cædmon said, his voice low and tight with excitement. "I need a fine blade. And a needle."
The Corpse-Warden, his curiosity piqued by Cædmon's sudden intensity, produced the items from a wooden tray of instruments. Cædmon took them, his hands steady. With the utmost care, he used the tip of the blade to snip the anchoring knots of the main hem. Then, using the needle as a guide, he began to slowly, painstakingly, unpick the thin, grey thread, separating it from the linen.
It was a slow, arduous process. The thread was delicate and seemed determined to cling to the main fabric. But Cædmon was patient. As he worked, he realized what he was looking at. It was not a random pattern. It was a language. A forgotten form of weaver's guild-script, a "thread-cant" used centuries ago to secretly mark the quality and origin of a tapestry without the merchants' knowledge. It was a language of knots and loops, a cipher woven into the very fabric of the garment. Tomin Fenn, a master of his craft, had known the old ways.
He finally freed the last of the thread. It lay coiled in his palm, a small, grey serpent of silk no longer than his hand. It was a message. A message the weaver had hidden in plain sight, on his own person, in the final hours of his life. He must have suspected he was in danger. He must have known his visitor was not to be trusted.
Cædmon stared at the thread, a tangible piece of the truth. This was the weaver's real last testament. Not the echo of his death, but the deliberate, secret warning he had left behind. The missing book was not a phantom. It was a diversion. The killer had searched the room and taken the most obvious source of information, believing he had secured his secret. He had never thought to check the hem of his victim's tunic.
"Remarkable," Hemlock breathed, peering at the coiled thread. "A secret whispered in silk. What does it say, Echo-Walker?"
Cædmon looked from the thread to the old man's inquisitive face. This was a truth too dangerous to share. Yorick and the Stǣl-witan were looking for a political fanatic. They were not equipped to hunt the ghosts of a proscribed death cult. This knowledge, for now, had to be his alone.
"I do not know," Cædmon lied, the word feeling strange and heavy on his tongue. "It is likely just a maker's mark of some kind. A trifle."
He carefully coiled the thread and placed it in a small, empty pouch in his satchel. He had what he came for. He had the proof. The murder of Tomin Fenn was not a simple act of fanatical violence. It was an execution, followed by a deliberate, if clumsy, search for a hidden message. And the message was now in his possession.
He thanked Master Hemlock for his assistance. The Corpse-Warden merely nodded, his pale eyes full of a knowing skepticism. He knew Cædmon was lying, but he also knew the difference between the city's business and a man's private burdens.
Cædmon left the sterile cold of the morgue and stepped back into the living city. The drizzle had stopped, but the sky was a bruised purple, the day bleeding into night. He felt the small weight of the coiled thread in his satchel. It was no longer just a clue. It was a key. A key to a conspiracy he was standing on the very edge of.
The task ahead was daunting. He had to decipher a forgotten language, uncover the truth behind a resurrected cult, and do it all while knowing that its members were ruthless enough to kill and organized enough to attempt to scrub their crimes from history itself.
He walked toward his lonely rooms, the weight of his new secret far heavier than any soul-stain. The dead weaver had given him not peace, but a mission. He had asked for forgiveness for intruding on Tomin's mind, but now he felt as though the weaver had entrusted him with a sacred duty. He had to unravel this thread, no matter where it led.
From the Rūn-hord: A Scholar's Note
On the Civic Watch of Dunholm (Stǣl-witan)
The organization known colloquially as the City Watch, or more formally as the Stǣl-witan ("Steel-Council" or "Men of Steel"), is a civic institution tasked with upholding the laws of the city as decreed by the Lord's Council. Unlike the household guards of the noble houses, who serve private interests, the Stǣl-witan serve the public good, at least in principle.
The watch is structured along simple hierarchical lines:
Captain: A single Captain commands the entire watch. This is a veteran position, often granted to a man who has distinguished himself in military service or has shown decades of unwavering loyalty. Captain Yorick is the seventh such captain since the watch's formal chartering.
Sergeant: Sergeants command individual shifts and districts. They are responsible for the day-to-day operations and discipline of the men under them.
Watchman: The common guardsman. These men are drawn from the city's populace and are generally provided with a leather hauberk, a helmet, a cudgel, and a spear. Their quality varies greatly.
Of particular note is the Watch's official relationship with "special consultants." The city charter allows the Captain to retain the services of individuals whose skills are deemed necessary for solving crimes beyond the scope of conventional investigation. This has included, at various times, Alchemists (for identifying poisons), Sages (for deciphering texts), and, for the past fifty years, the singular office of the Echo-Walker. The Walker is not a member of the Stǣl-witan and holds no rank, but a summons from the Captain is considered a lawful command. Payment for these services is drawn from a special, discretionary fund of the city treasury, a fact that is a source of constant grumbling among the city's more frugal council members.