Chapter 6: The Deacon's Letter

The burn above Noah's cell had not healed.

It came up through the floor sometimes, a low gold heat that made the stones sweat even in deep winter.

Noah had learned to feel it before he saw it.

He had learned that the light answered fear faster than it answered prayer.

He had learned that vampires would not stand near his door for long.

The guards on the east corridor walked the long way around his cell now.

One of them had blistered his palm on the iron latch and had not come back.

Noah carried that burn like a coin in his pocket.

It was the only thing in the fortress that was still his.

He had come to the courier room because of the seal.

He had seen Orwin's grey wax on a folded letter under a stack of courier packets in Adrian's side room two nights before.

He had decided then what he would do about it.

The door stood open.

Two guards flanked it, and neither of them stopped Adrian.

They stepped aside.

Noah counted them and filed it away.

Inside, the room was narrow and cold, and the lamp on the table was the only fire in it.

Adrian lifted a heavy wooden box from the shelf and set it on the table.

He opened it.

Church letters filled it to the brim, every one of them slit along one edge.

Several had been refolded and sealed again with the church's own grey wax stamp.

Noah looked at the resealed flaps and understood the shape of the thing before he touched a single page.

The traitor did not merely read the church's letters.

He had the seals. He had the couriers.

A novice stood in the corner of the room, a boy of sixteen in a church cassock, waiting on a courier who had not arrived.

He had seen Noah enter. He had not been sent out.

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