She glanced up at him from her place at the table where she sat sorting through a small box of old documents. He was bowed over his usual work of copying, having spent much of the morning mixing inks in a variety of vivid hues. How intent his face was, his brow indented with furrows of concentration. It was an intimidating face, truth be known, fierce somehow.
But Leta found, as she studied him quietly from that angle, that those fierce lines had grown very . . . She paused, choosing her words carefully even in her thoughts.
Dear, whispered the secret part of her. The lines of his face are very dear to you.
Sentimental drivel, her practical side responded with a snort. And inappropriate besides! Have you ever thought as much of your betrothed? Have you ever tried?
She frowned and focused once more upon her work. A bubbling well of frustration, which had become all too familiar in the last few months, threatened within her heart. It took a certain amount of resolution to force it back down. So much foolishness!
Shaking her head and selecting another document, she peered at it closely, then blinked, surprised. Up until this moment, she’d thought she knew the hands of all the scribes whose works were collected in Gaheris’s library. The Chronicler’s square script was familiar to her, of course, and the more rounded hand of Raguel, the former chronicler. These two between them had inscribed the bulk of the work to be found in this chamber, but there were other scraps of handwriting both spidery and elaborate, some with spelling more creative than she would have ever believed possible, some in foreign languages.
But this hand was entirely new to her.
“Chronicler,” she said, frowning over the scrap of parchment. “Chronicler, who wrote this?”
He leaned back in his stool, able from that high vantage to read over her shoulder. Leta looked up and saw him frown. Then he slid down and came over to the table, taking the parchment from her hand for closer inspection. His head came up no higher than hers, though he stood and she was seated. It amazed her sometimes how quickly she had grown accustomed to his odd appearance. Remembering how startled she had been that first day back last spring was enough to make her blush!
The Chronicler was unlike any person she had ever seen before. But he was himself. Her instructor, her mentor, her—she hesitated even to think it, for it seemed wrong for a young woman to think such things of a young man several years her elder—her friend.
But she hated the Wall.
She watched now as the Chronicler inspected the piece of writing she’d found, and the silence extended too long between them. No expression revealed his thoughts. His face lost its concentrated lines and fell into a relaxed blank. Had the Wall risen yet again? Would he block her out for the rest of the day behind barriers she could not understand? She waited, hoping and dreading she knew not what.
But at last the Chronicler said quietly, “This piece was done by Earl Ferox’s wife.”
He handed the parchment back to Leta and returned to his stool. Relieved enough to breathe once more, Leta stared at the work, the elegant, unfamiliar hand, almost too elegant to be easily read. Now that the idea was in her mind, she could detect a feminine touch. She frowned a little. “I thought you said you’d never known a woman to read or write.”
“I haven’t,” the Chronicler replied. “Lady Pero died before I was apprenticed to Raguel.”
“But this is indeed her hand? She truly could read and write as well as any man?”
“That she could,” the Chronicler said. “According to my predecessor, she was the cleverest woman in all the North Country. Delicate of body but strong of mind.”
Leta felt warmth fill her at this thought, a bond to this woman she had never met. “What does it say?” she asked.
“It’s a bit of nonsense,” said the Chronicler, picking up his quill and pumice. “An older version of that nursery rhyme you know, the one about the Smallman and the House of Lights. This version must have been that one’s forerunner. It’s a better piece. Nonsense, but better nonsense.”
“How would Lady Pero have come upon it? And why would she take the time to write it down?”
“Everything should be written down,” he replied, “however unimportant it may seem. She must have heard significance in this piece when some wandering minstrel visited Gaheris and sang for her and the earl.”
With that, he bowed again over his work, leaving Leta to study Lady Pero’s writing on her own. She knew she should set it aside and go on with her cataloguing. But somehow she could not resist trying to make out the words, disguised as they were behind embellishments and curls. Her lips formed the sounds under her breath.
“Fling wide the doors of light, Smallman,
Though furied falls the Flame—”
The library door opened, and Lady Mintha stood looking down on them. Leta gasped and dropped the slip of writing, her body filled with the urge to flee. But she couldn’t move.