A knife stabs Esme in the back, thrust by a Northman who used to be her Cleaved. The Prince of Nubrevna has betrayed her. This Northman has betrayed her, and now blood, blood everywhere. Now the world’s Threads fading away.

“Esme?” Iseult whispers, and the weasel purrs. “But … how?”

The weasel does not answer, but instead slithers over the pages. Paper crackles, and Iseult realizes Esme wants her to look at them.

“It’s too dark.” Iseult motions to the empty sky. “I’ll have to take them inside—”

The weasel squeaks, an emphatic no, and stamps across the pages again. Here, she seems to say. These can only be read here.

Iseult glances toward the castle. It is nothing more than pale lights between branches from this distance. No Threads approach, and it will be some time before Safi worries. After all, Iseult has taken nightly walks for several days now.

Her bones need movement. Her soul needs silence.

“Yes,” Iseult says at last, and she takes up the top paper. It is torn in places and slightly damp in the center, where tiny tooth marks pucker. After several moments of squinting, she is finally able to detect a diagram: crude figures on one side, a solo figure on the other, lines stretched between them. Words are scribbled in neat handwriting around the picture, but it takes Iseult a moment to recognize Arithuanian—strange Arithuanian, as if written a hundred years ago …

Or a thousand. Understanding pitches over her; the cold inside her deepens. “This is Eridysi’s diary,” she says, and Esme nods her weasel head.

Suddenly, the night’s darkness means nothing to Iseult. Suddenly, she cannot stop reading. Devouring each word, each illustration, each stroke from a pen wielded a thousand years ago. Here is a description of cleaving. Here a description of releasing Threads so they do not become ghosts to haunt the mind. Here is an explanation of how to hold Severed Threads and control them, and here is an introduction to cleaving from afar.

There’s a guide to dream-walking, and even a small snippet about failed attempts at reanimating the dead. They’re all observational notes, of course, for although Eridysi had been able to touch some magic, she had not been a Weaverwitch.

But that doesn’t matter to Iseult, for the person Eridysi had observed had been the Void Paladin of a thousand years ago. Portia had been her name, and she had been able to cleave and weave and break and bind. She had even made the first Loom, binding people who would eventually become the Hell-Bards.

And she’d forced Eridysi to watch every step of the way, to record every detail. Now all her methods, all her experiments, all her thoughts on the power of the Void—the power that lives inside Iseult—are written out for Iseult to read.

Except that this is only part of the diary. Only a few stolen pages.