I hadn’t told Rebecca of my endeavours to prove her night-sister’s innocence, and it was gnawing at me. I recognised, at a distance, the logic of my decision. The logic of my deception. To have any hope of proving it to Christophor, she had to be oblivious and not involved in any way. I should have ceased to see her entirely but that was too difficult. But what to do? What to do?

In my desperation I did something I hadn’t done in a long, long time: I opened a book. The mould-edged tomes that Christophor had sent for from Esteberg were stacked on the desk. Big, thick things that, though voiceless, seemed to judge me unworthy nonetheless. I knew none of the names of the books, nor the people who had written them. Some of those names had worn away so much I could barely read them. The pages inside were no better: full of words that I knew individually, but arranged in a manner I could make no sense of. Why would anyone subject themselves to such trials? There were so many easier ways to enjoy, to learn, to share, in the little time that was allotted to us. I flicked through page after page of indecipherables. Eventually, I found a page in a book that Christophor felt important enough to mark with a piece of paper.

I held this paper up to the fading light, turning it this way and that, but still couldn’t understand the symbols drawn there, nor the words that accompanied them. Were they in my night-brother’s hand? I thought so. I remembered him first finding this book back in Esteberg. It had been somewhere dark, a cellar perhaps?

The page so marked was dominated by a picture: a five-pointed star that held a circle within its boundary. At each point was a symbol. The lines of the star were of a different ink, almost black but with something else there which made them catch the light. At the centre of the star was a ball of darkness, a mess seemingly scratched onto the surface of the page. I gazed at those jagged, frenzied lines, sure they described some kind of void – I shuddered at the depth they held, greater than any cave or well, they stretched on beyond what was possible.

And leading to that dark circle were three red-inked streams. I knew they were streams of blood. I knew because I could smell it, so harsh it cut right to the back of my throat. Not just an old blood stain, or a small cut on a finger, but the fresh flowing of something final and total. Feeding that horrible darkness, three streams of blood labelled: Innocent, Learned, Broken.

I gripped the arms of the chair to steady myself. I managed to look away, but only so far as below the star. There, I found a list. It stood out boldly among the dense, tight lines. The symbols from the points of the star were repeated, and with each came a line as baffling as any in those strange books: