The silence in Cædmon's chambers was a physical entity. It was not the calming quiet of a library nor the peaceful hush of a temple; it was the dense, waiting silence of a tomb. It had weight. It had texture. And it was hungry. It sought to be filled, and Cædmon's mind was a storehouse of screams, whispers, and the final, gasping breaths of the dead. He fought the silence with ritual, the only armour he had against the ghosts he carried within him.
He sat on the single wooden chair at his small table, his back ramrod straight. Before him lay a square of dark, unpolished slate. With a shard of chalk, he began to draw, his hand moving with a slow, deliberate precision. He drew a circle, then another within it. He divided the circles into quadrants, marking each with a rūn, an ancient symbol from a language that had faded from common use but retained its power in the quiet corners of the world. Eoh, the yew tree, for death and endurance. Cen, the torch, for knowledge and revelation. Nyd, need, for fate and deliverance from distress. And finally, Is, ice, for stillness and the binding of spirits.
This was his meditation, his attempt to impose order on the chaos that churned within him. Each line of chalk was a prayer for focus, a bulwark against the memories that were not his own. The faint scent of salt from a week-old echo of a drowned sailor. A phantom itch behind his right eye from the last thoughts of a woman felled by poison. These were the soul-stains, the lingering psychic residue of his work. They were a constant, low thrum beneath the surface of his own consciousness, a discordant orchestra playing the songs of other lives.
He finished the chalk diagram, a complex frið-geard—a peace-yard, a sanctuary for the mind. He placed his fingertips on the cool, smooth slate, closed his eyes, and breathed. He tried to find the center of himself, the core of his being that was purely Cædmon, untouched by the dozens of deaths he had witnessed, inhabited, and absorbed. He searched for it as a man in a blizzard searches for a landmark, and as usual, he found only the shifting, howling snow of other men's ends.
A sharp, insistent knock on his door shattered the fragile peace. The sound was an intrusion, a violation. Cædmon's eyes snapped open. The ghosts in his head, disturbed by the sudden noise, stirred restlessly. The drowned sailor's salt-scent grew stronger.
"Open up! In the name of the Stǣl-witan!" The voice was young, reedy, and full of an importance that came from wearing a uniform, not from any innate authority.
Cædmon rose, the scraping of his chair legs on the wooden floor unnaturally loud in the silent room. He wiped the chalk diagram from the slate with the heel of his hand, smearing the runes of peace into a meaningless grey blur. The sanctuary was broken. Duty had come calling.
He unbarred the door to find a young guardsman, barely old enough to sprout a proper beard, rain dripping from the brim of his leather helmet. The boy's eyes were wide, and he took an involuntary step back when he saw Cædmon, as if expecting to see a monster or a specter. In a way, he was not wrong.
"The Echo-Walker?" the boy stammered, holding up a small, sealed scroll.
Cædmon took the scroll without a word. The wax seal bore the crest of the City Watch: a tower and a sword. He broke it with his thumbnail. The message within was brief, its script the blocky, functional hand of the Watch Captain.
Weaver found dead. Tanners' Row. Suspected foul play. Thy presence is required.
He looked up from the parchment, his grey eyes meeting the boy's. "I will attend," he said, his voice a low rasp from disuse.
The boy looked relieved to be dismissed. He gave a clumsy salute, turned, and clattered back down the stairs, eager to be away from the strange man in the silent room. Cædmon closed the door, the silence returning, but it was different now. It was no longer a waiting silence. It was the silence of a task accepted, a fate sealed. He donned his heavy, dark wool cloak, its hood deep enough to shadow his face, and gathered his small leather satchel of tools. He was no longer Cædmon, the man seeking peace. He was the Echo-Walker, the city's necessary nightmare. The tool was being taken from its box.
The journey through Dunholm was an exercise in isolation. The city was a living thing, a sprawling creature of stone and timber, breathing out steam and smoke into the damp air. The streets were arteries, teeming with the flow of humanity. Merchants hawked their wares, their voices a constant, competing clamour. Children chased hoops and each other through the crowded lanes, their laughter sharp and bright. Housewives haggled over the price of fish, their gossip a current beneath the noise of the city.
Through all this, Cædmon walked as if in a bubble of silence. People gave him a wide berth. Mothers pulled their children closer as he passed. The boisterous merchants would quiet for a moment, their eyes following him with a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity. They knew who he was. He was the man who spoke with the dead. He was an ill omen, a walker in shadows, a reminder of the finality that awaited them all. Their aversion was a wall, invisible but impenetrable. He had long ago stopped feeling the sting of it. It was simply a condition of his life, like the rain.
He turned onto Tanners' Row, and the general smell of the city—damp earth, woodsmoke, humanity—was bludgeoned by the chemical stench of the tanning process. The air was thick with the smells of lye, scraped hides, and decay. It was a street of necessary but unpleasant work, and it seemed a fitting place for a murder.
The weaver's workshop was a small, mean-looking building crammed between two larger structures, its timber frame stained dark by years of soot and rain. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered at a respectable distance, their faces pale and drawn, whispering amongst themselves. They parted for him as he approached, a silent, parting sea of morbid fascination. Two city guardsmen, their faces grim, stood before the door, keeping the crowd at bay. They recognized Cædmon and gave him a curt, professional nod, unbarring the door to let him pass into the darkness within.
The interior of the workshop was a single, large room, dominated by a massive, half-finished loom that looked like the skeleton of some great beast. The air was thick with the smells of wool, lanolin, and something else, something sharp and metallic and deeply wrong. Captain Yorick of the Stǣl-witan stood over the body, his great, scarred face set in a grim mask. He was a mountain of a man, clad in boiled leather and chainmail, the embodiment of the city's law. He looked up as Cædmon entered, his eyes showing a sliver of relief.
"Cædmon," he said, his voice like grinding stones. "A foul morning's work."
"So the summons said." Cædmon's eyes swept the room, his mind already working, cataloguing, observing. This was the first part of his process, the part that had nothing to do with magic. This was the part that belonged to him, the man, not the Walker. "What do we see, Yorick?"
Yorick grunted, appreciating the professionalism. He knew Cædmon was more than just a magical diviner. "The victim is Tomin Fenn, the weaver. Lived here his whole life. His wife found him an hour ago when he did not come for his morning meal. She is with neighbours now, half-mad with grief."
The body lay on the floor in a posture of surprise, limbs akimbo. He was a small man, his bald head fringed with grey hair. His chest was a dark, sodden mess, the simple homespun tunic dyed a horrific crimson.
"The weapon?" Cædmon asked, his gaze still moving, noting the overturned stool, the scattered shuttles, the threads on the loom cut midway through a complex pattern.
"Gone," Yorick said. "A knife, by the look of the wounds. Deep. Vicious. More than one thrust."
"The room?"
"Barred from the inside when the wife arrived. We had to break the door. The only other exit is that window." He pointed to a small, grimy window at the back of the workshop. "Painted shut for years. The paint is unbroken. No footprints in the mud outside it. The killer did not leave that way."
"So he barred the door from the inside and vanished?" Cædmon said, his voice laced with a faint, dry irony.
"It would seem so," Yorick rumbled. "A mystery for the priests, perhaps. I prefer more worldly answers. That is why I sent for you."
Cædmon nodded slowly. He walked the perimeter of the room, his eyes missing nothing. He noted the half-eaten loaf of bread and piece of cheese on a small table, a meal for two. He noted the state of the fire in the small hearth; it was cold, the ashes grey, meaning the death had occurred many hours ago, likely late last night. He knelt by the loom, examining the severed threads.
"This pattern," he said, tracing the intricate design with a gloved finger. "It is the crest of the House of Valerius. A commission?"
Yorick's eyes widened slightly. "Aye. A new banner for the Lord's name day. How could you know that?"
"The number of gold threads. The specific shade of blue. It is their signature. Tomin was a master of his craft." He stood up. "He was working late. He had a guest. They shared a meal." He gestured to the table. "The guest was someone he knew and trusted. He barred the door after they arrived, a common practice in this part of the city after dark."
He had reconstructed the last hours of the weaver's life without ever touching the body. He had shown the guards what they had missed. Now, the worldly investigation was done. Now, the part they feared, the part they needed, had to begin.
"Clear the room," Cædmon said, his voice dropping to the low, quiet tone he used before a Walking. "Leave me with him."
Yorick nodded, his face grim. He respected Cædmon's intellect, but he feared his magic. He and his men withdrew, their heavy boots thudding on the floorboards, leaving Cædmon in the sudden, profound silence with the dead weaver.
He began his ritual. The satchel, the water, the linen, the smooth river stone. He washed his hands, the cold water a shock that helped to focus his mind. He centered himself, breathing deeply, pushing away the world, pushing away the scarred face of Yorick, the smell of the tannery, the weight of his own cloak. He became an empty vessel, a blank slate waiting for a terrible story to be written upon it.
He knelt beside Tomin Fenn, the smell of blood thick in his nostrils. "Forgive the intrusion, weaver," he whispered, the words both a prayer and a warning.
He pressed his bare fingertips to the cold skin of the corpse's temples.
The world dissolved.
It was not a gentle fading, but a violent tearing, a wrenching of his consciousness from its mortal shell. The workshop vanished, replaced by a swirling grey mist, a formless psychic space he called the Threshold. The air hummed with a high-pitched, metallic ringing. This was the antechamber of the dying mind, the borderland between life and what came after.
He pushed forward, his will a blade cutting through the fog. He sought the final, imprinted moments of the weaver's life. The gemynd.
Suddenly, the mist coalesced. He was standing in the workshop, but it was different. It was warm. The fire in the hearth was crackling merrily. The loom was whole, the threads intact. He could feel the familiar weight of Tomin's body around his own consciousness, could feel the ache in Tomin's knee as if it were his own. He was looking through the weaver's eyes.
A man sat opposite him at the small table, smiling. The face was a blur, a smudge of indistinct features. The dying mind often protected itself from its greatest trauma, hiding the face of its killer in a fog of denial. Cædmon would have to work to see it.
He heard the weaver's voice, a thought more than a sound. It is good to see you, old friend. It has been too long.
The visitor raised a cup. To old times, Tomin. And to new ventures.
The memory jumped, fragmented. Now they were standing. The air was tense. The friendly warmth was gone, replaced by a chilling anger.
"You lied to me!" the weaver's thought-voice screamed. "This is not what we agreed! This is madness!"
"It is not madness, it is purity," the visitor's voice replied, calm and cold as a winter stone. "A new age requires the slate to be wiped clean. We start with the symbols of the old corruption. The House of Valerius. Their banner will be the first to burn."
"I will have no part in it!" Tomin shouted. "I am a simple weaver, not a traitor!"
Cædmon fought to see the face, pushing his will against the weaver's terror. The blur shimmered, thinned. He caught a glimpse of a young face, a fanatical gleam in the eyes, and something on his cloak… a glint of silver.
The memory fractured again, violently. A shove. The floorboards rushing up to meet him. The world turning upside down. The shock of impact. Then the shadow of the killer looming over him.
"A promise is a wyrd-bond, old friend," the cold voice said. "You know too much to be allowed to refuse."
Then came the first stab. Pain, white-hot and absolute, exploded in Cædmon's perception. It was not his pain, but he felt it as if it were. He felt the shock, the surprise, the sudden, horrifying understanding that this was the end. His consciousness reeled, threatening to be torn apart by the sheer force of the weaver's death agony. He clung to his own identity by a thread, repeating his own name like a mantra in the howling storm of another man's death. I am Cædmon. I am Cædmon.
He needed the face. He pushed one last time, pouring all of his will into piercing the veil of terror.
For a single, crystalline moment, the fog cleared.
The face was young, no older than twenty-five. His cheeks were scarred by a childhood bout of pox. But his eyes… his eyes were ancient, burning with a cold, unwavering light. And on his cloak, just as Cædmon had glimpsed, was a silver clasp. It was a serpent, coiled in a perfect circle, devouring its own tail. The Ouroboros.
The second stab came, and the third. The weaver's life force guttered like a spent candle. His last thought was not of his killer, but of a woman's face, smiling in the candlelight. My love…
Then, nothing. Only the encroaching, absolute blackness of the void.
Cædmon ripped his consciousness back with a strangled cry, his hands flying from the corpse as if from a fire. He landed hard on the floorboards of the workshop, gasping for air, his heart hammering against his ribs. The real world came flooding back in—the stench of the tannery, the drumming of the rain, the cold floor beneath him.
He was shivering uncontrollably. The phantom pain in his chest was a searing echo, and the weaver's final, desperate love for his wife was a raw, open wound in his own heart. The stain of this gemynd was deep. It would be a long time before he could forget the feel of Tomin Fenn's death.
He forced himself to his feet, leaning against the loom for support. His job was done. He had the truth. He staggered to the door and opened it. Yorick and his men stood waiting, their faces tense.
"Well?" Yorick demanded.
Cædmon took a ragged breath. "His killer was a young man. Pox scars on his face. He wore a silver clasp on his cloak, a serpent eating its tail." He paused, the image burned into his mind. "They knew each other. They argued about a commission. The banner for the House of Valerius. The killer wanted him to… change it. Burn it. He called it a symbol of corruption."
Yorick's heavy brow furrowed. This was no common robbery. This was something else entirely. "A political matter, then. A radical. We have had trouble with the reformist sects before."
"Perhaps," Cædmon said, though he felt it was more than that. The cold fanaticism in the killer's eyes spoke of something deeper than mere politics.
He had given Yorick his answer. His part was done. He pushed past the guards and out into the street, into the cleansing anonymity of the rain. Each step was an effort. The world felt unreal, distant. He was walking in two sets of memories at once: his own, and the fresh, bleeding memories of the dead weaver.
He made his way back to his rooms, the stares of the passersby feeling more pointed than usual. He felt exposed, raw. He barred the door to his chambers, but it brought no comfort. The room was no longer empty. It was filled with the ghost of Tomin Fenn.
He stumbled to his cot and collapsed, fully clothed, onto the thin mattress. He closed his eyes, but sleep would not come. Instead, he saw the killer's face, the burning eyes, the serpent clasp. He felt the phantom pain, the sorrow, the love.
As he lay there, adrift in the wreckage of another man's life, a strange discrepancy began to trouble him, a small, sharp stone in the shoe of his thoughts. He replayed the echo, the vivid memory of the weaver's workshop. The fire in the hearth. The half-eaten meal. The loom.
And the book.
On the small table, next to the bread and cheese, there had been a book in the weaver's memory. A thin, leather-bound volume, open to a page of scripture. Tomin had glanced at it just before his guest arrived. Cædmon remembered the detail with perfect clarity.
But when he had been in the real workshop, observing the scene before the Walking, there had been no book. The table had held only the bread, the cheese, and two empty cups.
It was a small thing. A meaningless detail. Perhaps the killer had taken it. But why? Why take a book of scripture and leave the coins in the weaver's purse untouched?
Or perhaps… perhaps the memory itself was flawed. It happened sometimes. The dying mind could invent, could confabulate. But this felt different. This felt… deliberate.
The thought was a chilling one. It suggested a level of complexity to the crime that went beyond a simple fanatic killing. The discrepancy gnawed at him. It was a loose thread. And Cædmon could not abide a loose thread.
Wearily, he pushed himself from the cot. The rain still lashed against his window. The day was far from over. He could not rest. Not yet. He had to know.
He donned his still-damp cloak once more. He had delivered his truth to the Stǣl-witan, but now he suspected it was not the whole truth. There was another layer to this, hidden and dangerous. He had to go back. Not to the workshop—the guards would have sealed it by now. But there was one other place where the dead weaver's secrets might be found.
The city morgue, known in Dunholm as the Cold House, was a place even the bravest guards disliked. It was a place of finality, of cold stone and colder flesh. For Cædmon, it was simply another workshop. He walked through the deepening twilight, the phantom ache in his knee a grim companion, the question of the missing book a burning coal in his mind. He had solved the city's mystery. Now, he had to solve his own.