Page 54 of The Lost Reliquary
Still days out from Carsaire, we are forced by a steady, stormy rain to stop early and take shelter beneath a rocky overhang off the road. Nolan’s temperament leaks almost as much as the stone; I can tell thedelay needles him by the way he stabs at the fire we cobble together. And the way he gets up every quarter hour to check the sky.
“Is this cursed rain ever going to let up?” he grumbles, taking his seat again.
I don’t look up from Jogue’s diary. Not my preferred choice of reading material, but I’m not going to explain to Nolan why I’d steal a book that outlines how to chop me up like a fatted hog. I’ve only managed a few minutes with the Renderers’ tome here and there, during the bathroom breaks, which are my only chance at solitude, hoping to learn something helpful or decode the mystery signature. But though I find a number of strange, script-like markings—and a lot of descriptions that do wonders to keep my appetite at bay—they’re nothing like the blocky, more geometric symbols on the letter. “Not before morning, I’d wager.”
“Do the followers of the Storm have some special sense about the weather?”
A dozen snappy retorts spring to mind, along with the urge to toss back the sharpest one. Instead, I reply simply: “No.”
Silence follows, and I sense the briefest hint of remorse. No, not that. More like a wonderment of where the comment came from to begin with. Fake Nolan didn’t seem to take offense at my origins; I wonder whether that opinion is shared with Real Nolan. Either way, the jab clearly slipped out unbidden.
“I’m eager to get there too.” It’s a kinder concession than he deserves, but I’m tired, damp, and—for once—in no mood for an argument.
“We’re days away still.”
“That gives us time to figure out how we’re going to find one man in a port home to thousands.” Quiet follows. A suspicious amount of it. “Unless you have an idea already?”
At first, I don’t think I’m going to get an answer. Nolan stares into the fire. The furrows in his brow deepen, then loosen a little. “I got a look at him.” The admission is slow, reluctant. “The heretic, as he left Novena. It was from a distance, but close enough that I think I’d recognize him again. I didn’t want to risk getting too close, meant to follow his trail…”
“But—surprise—Renderers put a stop to that plan?” Maybe I’m not above a jab too. “Care to share a description? I mean, just in case anythingtragicwere to happen to you along the way?”
He ignores that. Which, fine. He can keep one card hidden in his sleeve; I have my own stashed away.
“It doesn’t matter,” he grumbles. “The heretic will have probably moved along by the time we get there.”
“Or not.” I close the book, whose pages are endangered by the misty spray carried in by the wind. “Just because a score of ships come and go from the port everyday doesn’t mean he won’t be waiting for a particular one. Or that he’s even leaving Carsaire. For all we know that’s where they are hiding the reliquary. Or it’s close.”
“Sure,” he says bitterly. “Maybe they’ve secreted it on one of the hundred little unoccupied islands that run along the coast nearby.”
“Even better. I’ve never seen the ocean.”
I don’t bother to see what kind of response that incurs. Instead, I pull out the letter from the dead woman yet again. The symbols on the bottom are as confounding as ever, but there’s a pull to them as well. Something I can’t quite let go of. With a stick, I start sketching the symbols out in the dirt next to the fire.
“You’re still trying to figure that out.” Nolan says it flatly, in a way that doesn’t tell me what he thinks of the endeavor.
“Gives me something to do.”
“You studied the same codes and cyphers as the Dusk Cloister did. It doesn’t bear a resemblance to any of them.”
“Nope,” I agree.
“So then how do you expect to unravel it?”
I finish copying the marks. “Stop trying to pick a fight because you need a distraction.”
His mouth thins. “I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
If his goalwasto start an argument, he abandons it. I keep to the drawings, utterly clueless about what they might mean but happy to use the excuse of them as a focus for my attention. There’s a brief flicker of longing—Fake Nolan and I might have passed the time sparring, which had actually been kinda fun—but it extinguishes as quickly as the sparks that stir from the fire. We made our deal and being friendly again certainly isn’t part of it. I don’t regret having someone to watch my back, but I also can’t deny that Nolan’s concerns are legitimate. Thetrail turned cold when I decided to pursue the Renderers instead of the lead heretic. Now it’s practically frozen.
But there’s no unspilling that blood. So I quietly trace the symbols, over and over with my stick, until I know them by heart. Then, I trace normal letters below them, searching for any hints in the shape, the pattern, the design—
My stick stops and I stare at what I’ve been doing. Not the symbols, but rather the stick.
Something cracks open and a memory slips out, wispy and diminutive. It takes a minute to get a tight grasp on it, but when I do, I drop the stick and the letter, and return to Jogue’s diary, flipping to the sections near the front, where Jogue describes the deities’ places of worship. There’s nothing in the descriptions themselves, but the drawings he sketched in the margins of the page…
What I am looking for—that tiny pebble of recollection that’s been stuck in the shoe of my mind for the last couple of days—practically jumps off the page.
