The silence in Cædmon's chamber was a liar. It feigned peace while offering none, a placid surface over a churning abyss of borrowed sorrows. To an outsider, the room was merely quiet, the clamour of the city a distant, muted roar. But within the confines of his own skull, Cædmon was besieged. A symphony of ghosts played their discordant music, and he was the unwilling conductor.
He sat at his scarred wooden table, a map of Dunholm's forgotten underbelly spread before him like a flayed skin. The parchment was brittle, the ink faded, but his eyes saw more than the cartographer's careful lines. His gaze was unfocused, turned inward to the chaotic landscape of his own mind. A dull, rheumatic ache pulsed in his left knee, a parting gift from the weaver Tomin, a grim companion to the rhythm of his own heartbeat. A phantom taste of sea-salt, sharp and ancient, clung to the back of his throat, the ghost of a drowned sailor whose last breath he had tasted a month ago. Without warning, a searing pain shot through the palm of his right hand, and he saw, for a fleeting instant, the image of a merchant raising that same hand to ward off a killing blow that had come anyway.
He was a mosaic of last moments, a walking archive of pain. These were the gemynd-stanas, the soul-stains, and they were the price of his art. He fought to master them, to wall them off into their own dark corners of his consciousness, but today they were restless, agitated by the new and terrible knowledge he carried.
Do not trust the echo.
The weaver's secret message had poisoned the well of his own certainty. Every phantom pain, every ghostly sensation, was now suspect. Was the ache in his knee truly Tomin's, or a detail implanted by a Scrivener to lend a false echo the texture of truth? The paranoia was a cold serpent coiling in his gut, whispering that his own senses, his own gift, could no longer be trusted.
He forced his attention back to the map. He had to focus. He had to act. The cipher-thread had given him a name and a place: The Magister and The Wyrm's Tooth. The latter was his only tangible lead. He traced the faded lines of the map, his finger hovering over the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city's oldest quarter. The First Kingdom sewers, the crypts of forgotten nobles, the natural caverns the city had grown over like a scab over a wound. The Wyrm's Tooth. Was it a rock formation? A forgotten tavern? A street name lost to time? The map gave no clue, but it offered a place to begin the search.
He was steeling his resolve, gathering the focus needed to descend into that darkness, when a sharp, peremptory knock hammered at his door.
The sound was a physical blow. The ghosts in his head screamed in unison. The pain in his palm flared with such intensity that he snatched his hand back from the table with a choked gasp. The knock was not the hesitant rap of a neighbour nor the clumsy fumbling of a drunk. It was the hard, impatient fist of official business.
Cædmon rose, his chair scraping harshly against the floorboards. A tide of bitter frustration washed over him. Not now. By all the gods, not now. He was on the verge of his own hunt, the first real step in a secret war that could decide the fate of the city's very concept of truth. To be pulled away now, to be chained to the wheel of his public duty, was a torment.
But refusal was not an option. He was the city's tool, the Walker, the key used to unlock the secrets of the dead. To refuse a summons from the Captain of the Stǣl-witan would be to shatter that tool in the eyes of his master. It would invite questions, suspicion, scrutiny. His ability to move in the shadows depended on his flawless performance in the light. He was a prisoner of the very reputation that gave him access.
With a deep, weary exhalation that felt like it carried a piece of his own soul with it, he drew back the heavy iron bar and opened the door.
A guardsman stood on the cramped landing, his face impassive but his eyes unable to hide a flicker of unease. He held out a scroll, the wax seal bearing the sword and tower of the City Watch. "A summons from Captain Yorick," the guardsman said, his voice clipped. "He requires your presence at Queen's Quay, on the Flēot docks."
Cædmon took the scroll. The guardsman pulled his hand back as if from a hot coal. Cædmon ignored the familiar gesture of revulsion and broke the seal. The script was Yorick's, as blunt and functional as the man himself.
Body from the river. Fisherman's net. Smells of murder. Need your art.
"Inform the Captain that I will attend," Cædmon said, his voice a flat, toneless thing.
The guardsman gave a curt nod, visibly relieved to have his duty done, and clattered down the stairs, his footsteps echoing a hasty retreat. Cædmon closed the door and leaned his forehead against the cool, rough wood. He looked back at the map on his table, a chart of his true course. That journey would have to wait. The city had another ghost, another stain, for him to carry.
He gathered his satchel, the familiar weight of its contents both a burden and a strange comfort. He pulled the deep hood of his cloak over his face, a gesture of retreat from a world he could no longer properly see, and stepped out into the damp Dunholm air, a man forced to chase a minnow while a leviathan swam in the deep.
The docks were a different kingdom, with its own laws, its own language, and its own gods—the chief among them being tide and trade. The air here was a raw, potent brew of salt, tar, river mud, and the sharp, clean scent of pine from the northern forests, stacked high on the quays. The sounds were a chaotic symphony: the shrill, lonely cries of gulls, the rhythmic groaning of timbers as the ships fought their moorings, the bellowed commands of shipmasters, and the percussive clang of hammer on iron from a nearby smithy.
Queen's Quay was a hive of frantic, purposeful activity. Bare-chested men with arms like knotted ropes wrestled heavy barrels up gangplanks. Merchants in salt-stiffened coats argued with captains over the price of grain. It was a world of sweat, muscle, and coin, a world with little time for the subtleties of the upper city.
A grim knot of stillness had formed at the far end of the quay, an unnatural pool of quiet in the surrounding river of noise. A cordon of Stǣl-witan stood guard, their presence a stark line of authority, keeping the curious dockworkers at a distance. As Cædmon approached, the crowd of onlookers parted for him, their faces a mixture of raw curiosity and deep-seated fear. These were men who understood the tangible dangers of a slipped rope or a crushing wave; the unseen dangers of a man who walked in the minds of the dead were a different, more unsettling sort of storm.
Captain Yorick stood at the center of the cordon, a great, weathered rock of a man against the backdrop of the grey, churning river. He saw Cædmon and his grim expression softened with a sliver of relief.
"Cædmon," he rumbled, his voice a match for the low groan of the ships. "I had hoped not to need you again so soon. The city's appetite for violence is unending."
He gestured toward the wet flagstones. A body lay there, covered by a piece of rough sailcloth. The shape beneath was unmistakably human.
"A fishing trawler, the Sea-Sprite, brought him up in their nets an hour past," Yorick explained. "Snagged him in the deep channel south of the bridge. The crew are still being sick over the rail."
"The river claims its own often enough, Yorick," Cædmon said, his eyes already on the shrouded form. "What makes this your business and not the Corpse-Warden's?"
"This," Yorick said, and reached down to pull back the sailcloth.
The body was that of a man in his prime, his powerful frame now bloated and pale from its time in the river's embrace. He was dressed in the simple, hard-wearing tunic and breeches of a dockworker. But it was his head and neck that drew the eye. A dark, ugly bruise marred his temple, a starburst of violence that had not come from being dashed against a rock. And around his throat, a thin, garrote-like line of deep purple bruising stood out starkly against the pallid flesh.
"He was struck senseless," Yorick stated, his voice hard. "Then strangled. Then tossed into the Flēot to be washed away. This was no drunken fall. This was an execution." He let out a heavy sigh, a sound of pure frustration. "Barely two days since we locked Guthred the Crow in his cell for the weaver's murder, and another body appears. This city is a serpent that feeds on its own tail."
The casual mention of the weaver's case sent a cold spike through Cædmon. He looked at Yorick's face and saw the absolute, untroubled certainty of a man who believes he has served justice. The irony was a physical acid in his throat. Yorick, a good man, a man dedicated to the truth, was now the unwitting guardian of the Serpent Circle's greatest lie.
"Guthred sings like a canary in his cell, you know," Yorick went on, mistaking Cædmon's silence for grim agreement. "Not to the murder, of course. But he proudly admits to his treasonous pamphlets. He is a fanatic, plain and simple. It is a mercy when the world is so clear. When you can look a man in the eye and see the rot in his soul."
Cædmon could not speak. He could not tell Yorick that the rot was elsewhere, that it was a far deeper and more insidious corruption than a handful of angry pamphlets. He could not tell him that his prize prisoner was a scapegoat, a piece of stage-dressing in a far more terrible play. To do so would be to detonate a bomb in the heart of the city's legal system and paint himself as either a madman or a heretic. He was trapped, forced to play his part.
"Let us see what this poor soul has to say," Cædmon said finally, his voice quiet as he turned his full attention to the dead man. It was a relief to have a problem he could, perhaps, solve.
"The stage is yours, Walker," Yorick said, stepping back and gesturing for his men to widen the circle.
Cædmon knelt on the damp, grimy stones of the quay. He began his ritual. The small flask of water, the square of clean linen, the smooth, dark river stone he held in his palm as an anchor to his own reality. He washed his hands, the cold water a familiar shock. He breathed deeply, pushing the world away. He pushed away the smell of the river, the cries of the gulls, the heavy presence of Yorick. He pushed away the chilling words of the cipher: Do not trust the echo. He pushed away the serene face of Leofwynn, a memory too precious to be brought into a place like this. He tried to become a void.
But as he prepared to make contact, a cold sweat beaded on his forehead. The paranoia, which had been a dull hum, now screamed in his mind.
How can you know? How can you be sure this isn't another forgery? A test? A trap?
He looked at the dead man's face, at the slack jaw and empty eyes. This was not a master weaver involved in a high-stakes political game. This was a simple dockworker. His death was likely as sordid and meaningless as the grime on the quay. A forged echo, he reasoned, would be a tool for a greater purpose—to hide a conspiracy, to frame an important man. It would be a work of artifice, cold and precise. A true echo, the echo of a man like this, would be a mess of raw, unfiltered emotion. It would be chaotic, ugly, and real. He had to trust that he could tell the difference. He had to trust himself.
"Forgive me, brother," he whispered to the corpse, the words a plea to the universe.
He reached out a hand that trembled almost imperceptibly and laid his fingertips on the cold, clammy skin of the dead man's forehead.
The world did not dissolve. It shattered.
He was plunged into a maelstrom of raw sensation. The overpowering taste of strong, cheap ale. The greasy feel of mutton stew on his lips. The deafening roar of a dockside tavern, a place far rougher and louder than The Oaken Shield. He recognized it as The Drowned Rat, a notorious dive known for its brawls and bad liquor. He was inside the dockworker's body, feeling the satisfying weight of his powerful muscles, the pleasant burn of ale in his belly.
He was looking at a game of dice, the small bones clicking and skittering across a table scarred with the names of a hundred forgotten sailors. Three other men sat with him, their faces rendered in perfect, ugly detail by the smoky lamplight. There was no fog here, no convenient blurring of features.
"Pay what you owe, Aelfric!" a great, booming voice shouted in the echo. The speaker was a mountain of a man with a wild, tangled red beard and a gap where a front tooth should have been. "The bones have spoken!"
The dockworker, Aelfric, felt a hot surge of drunken rage. "Spoken with your cheating tongue, Thorkell! I saw you cup the die! You've been cheating us all night!"
The name, Thorkell the Red, was known on the docks. A notorious bully and a braggart. The argument exploded, fueled by cheap ale and accusations. Shouts became curses, curses became shoves. The memory became a chaotic blur of lurching movement, of an overturned table, of the shock of splintered wood.
Then, a sudden, blinding pain at his temple as something hard—a cudgel, a tankard—struck him. The world spun crazily. He felt himself falling, the grimy floorboards rushing up to meet him. He was on his back, dazed, the noise of the tavern a distant roar. Thorkell the Red stood over him, his face a mask of drunken fury. But it was one of the others, a small, weasel-faced man named Pip, who was moving behind him, a length of thick rope in his hands.
Aelfric's drunken anger evaporated, replaced by a surge of pure, primal terror. This was not a fistfight anymore.
The rope tightened around his throat. The pain was a crushing, white-hot agony. He couldn't breathe. His hands clawed at his own neck, his nails digging into the rough fibers of the rope. He saw the faces of his companions, not as friends, but as leering demons in the smoky light. His last thought was not of a loved one, not of a prayer. It was a single, pathetic, furious thought of the ten copper pennies they had cheated him out of.
Then, the world dissolved into a suffocating, absolute black.
Cædmon tore his mind away with a choked cry, his own hands flying to his throat, gasping for air that wasn't there. He collapsed backward onto the hard stones of the quay, coughing and sputtering, his lungs burning with a phantom fire. The real world rushed back in—the cold air, the smell of the river, the concerned face of Captain Yorick leaning over him.
It had been real. He knew it with an unshakeable certainty. The echo had been a chaotic, ugly, emotional storm. It was filled with the pathetic, pointless rage of a stupid death. It had none of the cold, narrative precision of the weaver's forged memory. This was the truth. A sordid, brutal, and utterly meaningless truth.
"Cædmon! By the gods, are you well?" Yorick's voice was filled with alarm.
Cædmon pushed himself into a sitting position, taking deep, ragged breaths of the damp air. "I am… well," he rasped, his throat feeling raw and bruised. He looked up at the Captain, his eyes clear now, the doubt replaced by a grim certainty. "His name was Aelfric. He was murdered in a tavern called The Drowned Rat. It was a brawl over a gambling debt."
He forced himself to continue, the details sharp and clear. "There were three of them. The one who struck him first, the leader, is a large man with a red beard. His name is Thorkell."
Yorick's face, which had been etched with concern, transformed into the hard mask of the hunter. He straightened up and turned to his sergeant. "Ordlaf! Thorkell the Red. Do you know of him?"
Ordlaf, who had been watching with a grim fascination, nodded sharply. "Aye, Captain. A brute and a cheat. Hauls timber for the northern traders. The Drowned Rat is his favorite sty. If he was there last night, he won't have strayed far."
"Then go," Yorick commanded, his voice ringing with authority. "Take Hengist and Wulfric. I want Thorkell and his friends in chains before the midday bell. I want them to know that the eyes of the dead see everything in this city."
Ordlaf and his men departed at a run, their purpose clear, their faith in the Walker's art reaffirmed.
Yorick turned back to Cædmon, a look of deep, honest gratitude on his weathered face. "You have done the city another great service, Walker. You gave a voice to a man the river tried to silence."
Cædmon could only nod, the Captain's praise feeling like a physical weight. He had solved this simple crime, but in doing so, he had only reinforced the lie that his gift was infallible. He had polished the weapon that the Serpent Circle would use against the city.
He was now burdened with a new stain, a new layer of psychic grime. The drunken fury of Aelfric now warred with the sorrow of the weaver and the fear of the sailor. The chorus of ghosts in his head had a new, angry voice. His brief, terrifying journey into a true echo had only made him more aware of the cold, alien artifice of the one that truly mattered.
He rose to his feet, pulling his cloak around him like a shroud. He had done his duty. He had paid the price in flesh and spirit. Now, the city and its endless, pathetic tragedies would have to wait. His own hunt, the one that mattered, had been delayed long enough. The path to the Wyrm's Tooth was waiting, and he could feel the darkness calling him.
From the Dunholm Compendium: A Page from a Dockworker's Guild Ledger
Entry Date: The third day of Sun's Turn, Year of the Black Wyrm
Subject: Member's Passing & Dispensation of the Bereavement Purse.
It is recorded with sorrow that the Guild Brother Aelfric, son of Wulfstan, was this day pulled from the river Flēot, his life having been taken by foul means. Aelfric was a member in good standing for twelve years, known for a strong back and a weakness for the dice. He was a reliable hand on the eastern cranes.
The Stǣl-witan, by use of the Walker's art, have identified the perpetrators as Thorkell 'the Red' and two associates, following a gambling dispute at The Drowned Rat. May they meet the justice of the magistrate's rope.
As per Guild law, the Bereavement Purse is to be dispensed.
Item: To his widow, Eadgyth, for funeral rites and immediate needs: Two (2) silver shillings.
Item: To the Guild's orphan fund, for the care of his three children: A weekly stipend of ten (10) copper pennies, until the youngest comes of working age.
Item: To the proprietor of The Drowned Rat tavern, to clear his outstanding ale-debt and preserve the Guild's good name: Eight (8) copper pennies.
Let the records show that Brother Aelfric's accounts with the Guild are now settled. May the Old Way guide his spirit to peaceful shores.
Signed,Master Eadwig, Guild Recorder