Epilogue
Through frost and flame, through death and night,
I wandered far from home and light.
Yet here, within your arms’ embrace,
I’ve found at last my resting place—
For home was never House nor throne,
But you, my love, and you alone.
—Severlaine, Lays of Myth and Memory
The setting sun fractured through a hundred facets of leaded glass, flooding the great watch room in ruby and topaz, carnelian and citrine. A thousand gilt spines shimmered from half-stocked shelves and pine packing crates, while dust motes drifted golden through the rays.
At the oaken desk before the west fenestration sat Aristide, needle flashing as it stitched the binding thread, his left hand steadying the pages. The flesh had healed well in the year since they’d fled, though his fingers would never again move with their former grace. A mercy, compared to what he’d nearly lost.
“Master Aris, you missed a spot.” Fenomena swung her legs from a nearby bookshelf’s ledge.
“I haven’t missed anything.” Aristide didn’t look up. “It’s an intentional break in the stitching to allow the leather to flex. If you’d been paying attention this past century, you’d know that.”
“Oh.” There was a brief pause. “I did know that! I was just testing you, silly.”
“Of course you were.” The Keeper finished the stitch and cut the thread clean.
The homunculus slid from the shelf and scampered to the edge of his desk. “Ooh, what’s that one called?”
“Daemonisches Wissen.” Aristide turned the tome over, examining the glaucous stingray shagreen. “A thirteenth-century taxonomy of the Albengeister—or rather the elves that supposedly persisted after Germany’s conversion. The Dominicans couldn’t quite reconcile them with biblical devils, so they declared them lesser ones… though their explanations look suspiciously like the old pagan tales. The Vatican tried to suppress it, naturally.”
“Those pictures are so spooky! Do you think anyone will ever read it?”
“Perhaps, or perhaps not. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t preserve it, regardless.” He glance over at her, a smirk upon his face. “Besides, you’ve seen worse, Fen. I seem to recall you opening the Suichū Kyōen and commenting, quite innocently, about the ‘squiggly parts.’”
“Hey! I was giving you the full tour! You needed to know what was in every section! And—and I don’t have to remember it anyway.” Fenomena tapped her bone china temple. “That’s the best part of having an electrum mind: I pick what gets preserved!”
He chuckled. “I envy you.”
Fenomena’s head swiveled to watch the sinking sun. “Ooh! Pretty. Too bad it has to set so fast.”
“It’s the latitude. We’re still high north, even now, and sunsets are always brief this far from the equator.”
“Why is Scotland so gloomy, Master Aris? It’s all... gray and drizzly and damp and gray and more gray and then it’s dark! At least Avalost had the pretty auroras.” She crossed her arms. “Why couldn’t we have found a lighthouse somewhere sunny, Master? Somewhere like... like Italy, where I was made! Somewhere like Venice!”
“Aurorae. And Venice is sinking, Fenomena.”
“But they have gondolas, Master! And yummy baicoli biscuits and fritole ripiene di crema! Here we just have fish. Fish, fish, and more fish! Big beige cod just like back north, and the ugly little dogfish that bite the nets, and those huge, horrible drowned snake-things. Yuck!”
“Those would be conger eels, dear,” a third voice answered from the doorway.
“Conger conger is the Latin designation.” Avonlea leaned against the frame, amusement in her eyes. Steam curled from the teacup in her hand. “And they’re not snakes—they’re fish. Actinopterygii. Though I suspect they’re responsible for more than a few sea serpent sightings.”
“I knew that too, Mistress Avon!” Fenomena bounced on her toes. “Drowned snake-things just sounds way scarier than Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Subphylum Vertebrata, Class Actinopterygii, Order Anguilliformes.”
Avonlea laughed softly as she crossed the room. Her wheat-gold crown had grown back into its tussled, boyish crop. The sleeves of her collarless shirt hid where the scourge marks had faded, and only faint scars traced her cheeks. If anything, they only sharpened her beauty.
She came to stand beside Aristide, her hand settling warmly on his shoulder as she set his tea beside his work. “Nearly finished with the demons?”
“Elves.” He placed the needle in the pincushion. “Pre-Christian folklore the monks tried to squeeze into their schema. They couldn’t quite make it work.”
Avonela’s thumb traced along his collarbone. “Elves. Rather like you, then?”
“Not this again.” Yet the words were fond.
All three fell silent as the sun bled crimson across the leaden Pentland waters, transmuting the black stone skerries into amethyst and bronze.
“This needs music. Sunsets are sad without music. It’s a rule!” Fenomena skipped over to the gramophone by the hearth and rifled through the records stacked beneath it. “We could do Vivaldi! Or Chopin! Oh! Oh! Maybe Verdi? All those beautiful arias!”
“Must we?” Aristide leaned back in his chair. “Mankind has survived without recorded music for millennia, Fenomena. Why, I very much doubt the Greeks required orchestras while watching the sun set from Sounion—”
“Play Ave Maria,” Avonlea interrupted softly, her hand finding Aristide’s where it rested on the desk. His fingers turned, threading through hers.
The homunculus twirled in place. “Yes! Schubert is perfect! Mistress Avon, you’re so smart!” She slipped the record from its paper sleeve, then—standing tiptoe—lowered it onto the spinning turntable.
The gramophone crackled to life, and the opening strains of Schubert’s D. 839 filled the room as the sun finally died. Its last incarnadine rays lit the portraits above the mantle: Actarus exhaling cigar smoke in his austere whites, Réal lifting her glass of glace wine with that tender smile, Kassian timeless in his medieval houppelande. And beneath them all blazed Emilien’s urn.