The back room of the Chapel of the Reeds was cold, lit only by a single rushlight floating in a cracked clay pot saucer of fish oil.
Tomas sat on an upturned salt tub, his ash-wood pack frame resting against his shins. Across from him, Elder Maren had cleared the small table. He laid out three thick, heavy folios bound in sheepskin that had turned stiff and yellow as old horn. Outside, the endless rain beat against the tarred plank walls. The sulfur-choked wind whistled through the willow stilts below the floorboards.
The books were damp. Moisture had seeped into the thick parchment along the lower margins, causing the parchment to cockle and buckle into waves like the surface of a wind-ruffled pond. The animal glue in the spines had long since perished. Each gathering of leaves was held in place only by coarse cords of braided linen thread that Maren had sewn through the parchment folds with her own bone needles.
Before opening the ledgers, Tomas attended to his hands. The cold marsh damp made his scarred forearm throb with a deep, grinding ache that settled into the bone. He unlaced his wrist brace, took a small stone bottle of warm carbolic vinegar. Then he rubbed the pungent wash into the puckered skin. Step by step, he began his daily rehabilitation drill. Pressing his scarred palm flat against the oak tabletop, then lifting each finger one by one against the pushback of the wood. It was tedious, painful labor…
