Two Cats

Chapter 15

It was much later that evening when I finally arrived back home, the two knights guarding the main entrance of my keep greeting me with the look of someone who's just thought the words “Oh crap, it's the boss!”

Talia didn't greet me at the door, which gave me a rough estimate of the time. Even the live-in staff that I employ have lives outside of taking care of my wishes or handling my affairs. It was unreasonable to expect an employee to be at my beck and call all hours of the day and night, after all.

Except Cyrus, of course. My Captain wasn't allowed to have a life ... not while he was busy protecting mine.

He probably wouldn't be back until later in the evening, returning only once he'd finished gathering the additional information on Teuring. I decided that I'd wait for him downstairs, go over the original notes that he had provided me with. There was nothing else to do really, save for mulling over everything I thought I knew from beginning to end, like I'd been doing for the entire walk home.

It hadn't helped. The only thing that walking had accomplished was to make my feet even more sore than they'd been when I had left.

Once downstairs I immediately went to the drinks cabinet, and after carefully looking over various bottles of brandy, scotch, herb infused absinthe and countless other concoctions, I sighed softly to myself and rolled up my sleeve, reaching into the frigid water of the wine cooler for a bottle of green wine. Some days I don't even know why I bother keeping those other drinks down there.

I was towel-drying the bottle as I walked back to my usual seat, when I noticed something I didn't recognize sitting right in front of the place I ordinarily do my thinking, perched on top of the various notes I had left there. It appeared to be a book.

Perplexed, I walked over to it. It was, indeed, a book. It was red-bound with some very pleasant golden threading on the outside, and looked as though it had been cared for a great deal. And it was thick, very thick, the entire thing more closely resembling a boot box than a book. Dauntingly thick. I was certain it wasn't one of mine.

There was a note tucked in behind the cover, with one corner sticking out just enough to be visible. I opened the front cover and inspected the small piece of paper. It was written on good, plain stock with handwriting I recognized.

“With everything else going on, I figured I'd reconsider something you'd told me earlier as well. Do any of these look familiar? -T”

Lifting the note revealed the contents of the first page of the book - a colorful drawing of a rope tied in an elegant and improbable pattern, three rolling hills sitting in the background behind it, two trees perched atop the leftmost one. The crest of Knothills.

Small bits of torn paper lined the top of the book nearest the spine, more of them than I could conveniently count. I opened the book to the first torn paper, and was greeted by an artist's rendering of a sword, hilt at the top of the page and point at the bottom, perfect in every detail.

Bless Theo's heart.

This drawing did not resemble either of the swords that I glimpsed in Teuring's possession that day at the Circles – it had a snake and flower I didn't recognize at the center, and I could make out a leaf or two in the guard. The page on the opposite side of it contained a wealth of information for anyone who actually cared about exactly how much birch charcoal had been used at what phase in its development, the theoretical force it could withstand, things like that. Most importantly, at the very top of that page was a single, carefully penned word, the name of the family that had commissioned the sword to be created – Aspyris.