Sister Oda had kept the parish and municipal records of Harth through twelve repetitions of the same autumn week, and in all those dozens of mornings and nights she had never once allowed a tear to fall onto a leaf of clean vellum. Salt water ruined the alum-size of calfskin; it made the iron-gall ink feather into fuzzy spiderwebs along the grain and blurred the letter-strokes that future eyes would need to read.
Even in the earlier loop when the burning timbers of Saint Jude’s roof had crashed down across her scriptorium desk and pinned her legs to the flagstones while the Host’s fire-arrows hissed through the shattered lancet windows, Oda had kept her sleeve pressed over the open chronicle until Sir Cael’s gauntleted hands tore the smoking rafters off her back.
Now, standing at the oak reading lectern on the porch of the River Lantern while two hundred townsfolk watched in silence from the wet cobblestones of the square, Sister Oda felt her vision blur until the ruled red lead-lines on Folio Ninety-Four swam like red threads under river water.
She did not wipe her eyes with her sleeve. She waited three slow heartbeats, holding the loaded goose-quill an inch above the parchment, and let the two tears drop straight down onto the upper margin of the page—right above the heading she had just written in her finest uncial script:
