The days that followed the sending of her contract to Doctor Thorne were an exercise in patience and dissimulation.
Catherine walled herself up in the role of the Oracle in spiritual convalescence. To Valerius, she was a mystical creature who needed rest after battling dark forces.
He showered her with gifts, delicate foods, and his heavy-handed attention, convinced that his support was the pillar that kept her from sinking.
At night, she welcomed him into her bed, and their union had become for her a cold ritual, a mechanism of power.
She used her body with the precision of a craftsman, every sigh, every embrace calculated to maintain her grip, to keep him satisfied and distracted.
While her body was under his, her mind was leagues away, in the Scriptorium archives with Mathieu, or in the dark alleys with Madame Lin's spies.
The outside world reached her only in fragments.
A laconic message from Madame Lin confirmed that Baron de Courville had been formally condemned by the ecclesiastical court for heresy.
The pyre was imminent.
The false trail had worked perfectly, and the Church's attention was completely diverted.
Another, more troubling message informed her that her agent Mathieu had left Thorne's clinic. The doctor had declared his physical recovery complete, but Lin's note, quoting an informant in the district, described a man who was
"changed, silent, who fled the daylight and no longer seemed entirely human." Milo's curse was continuing its slow, insidious work.
Catherine filed this information away. Mathieu was out of reach for now, a problem for later. Her absolute priority was Thorne's report on his second visit to Jun-Ho Park.
It finally arrived, a week after his first infiltration. A thick envelope, delivered by an increasingly nervous Leo, who seemed to understand he was carrying things far more dangerous than simple spices.
Catherine locked herself in her library, broke the seal, and began to read. Thorne's report was, like the previous one, a model of clinical clarity and barely veiled arrogance.
"Subject: Follow-up visit, J-H. Park.
In accordance with your instructions, I presented myself for the second consultation. The guard, Milo, was still present and suspicious. I invoked the need for a calm environment for the examination of the patient's mental state, arguing that the presence of an armed guard only exacerbated his paranoia. I suggested that his martial energy was interfering with the spiritual energies I was attempting to soothe. After a moment of deliberation, he agreed to post himself outside the room, but the door remained ajar. An acceptable compromise.
I approached the subject, Park, using the leverage you provided. I spoke to him of the 'spirit of Anne' that was haunting him. The reaction was immediate and spectacular. The subject collapsed in tears, thereby confirming his own guilt in the drama that ties him to this spirit. He became completely malleable, seeing me as a confessor, a savior.
I administered the clarity elixir according to your instructions (a fascinating composition, by the way. I would like to discuss its properties with you on occasion). The effects were swift. The subject entered a state of semi-consciousness, his mental barriers lowered.
The interrogation began. Here is the transcript of the relevant information extracted from his disjointed discourse:
The plan for the Dock Fire was not initially to kill. The objective was the financial ruin of rival merchant houses, particularly the Elmers and the Solari. The fire was meant to be an act of massive economic sabotage. It was The Rook who gave the order to lock the families in the warehouses before setting the fires, turning a financial crime into a massacre. 'He said the dead don't talk,' the subject mumbled.
Jun-Ho Park, then a Captain of the Watch, received an astronomical sum of gold to ensure the investigation concluded it was an accident. The gold was delivered by an intermediary whose name he does not know, only a nickname: The Banker.
The direct orders never came from The Rook himself. They came through a man. A single man. The right hand, the true architect of The Rook's network. Park described him as a 'cold man, who never smiled, who spoke like a lawyer and killed like a butcher.'
I pressed the subject for a name.
He was terrified to speak it, even in his delirious state. He kept saying that 'to speak his name is to invite him.' After another dose of the elixir, he finally yielded. The name fell from his lips."
Catherine stopped reading, her heart hammering.
This was the moment. The real name. The key to everything. She could feel the power of this information, even on the page. She resumed reading, her eyes fixed on the final paragraph of the report.
"It is important to note that the subject was in a state of extreme confusion. He first spoke of the architect of the massacre, The Rook's trusted man. But his memories seemed to merge, and he began to speak of The Rook himself as if they were the same person. It is therefore with some caution that I report to you the name he whispered just before losing consciousness.
He called him...
Alastair.
Catherine felt a vertigo so intense she had to grip the table. Alastair. It was impossible. It was a monstrous coincidence.
A mistake from Park's broken mind.
Alistair Elmer. That was her father's name.
Her father.
The Harbor Master.
The first victim listed on the death report.
The room began to spin.
Her mind refused to make the connection. Had Park, in his madness, confused the name of the victim with that of the butcher?
Or was the truth something far more horrible, far more twisted than anything she could have ever imagined?
Her gaze fell upon the file on the Fire she had retrieved herself. She unfolded it with trembling hands, her eyes scanning the lines until she found the entry.
Elmer, Alistair. Harbor Master. Deceased.Elmer, Lyra. Wife. Deceased.Elmer, Anne. Daughter, age: 5. Deceased.
And then she saw it. A detail she hadn't noticed in the shock of her first reading. A detail that had seemed unimportant. Right next to her father's name, a note from the archivist of the time, handwritten.
"Body not identified. Presumed deceased."
There was no body.
Her father had not died in the fire.
A thought, a truth so monstrous it should have broken her, formed in her mind with the clarity of a diamond.
The Rook had not killed her father.
Her father was The Rook.