The windows rattled again, and a moment later, Captain Frost came back. Mr. Haypotten returned only a minute or two after that. He held a roll of gray oilskin in one hand. “This is it. What wasn’t lost.”
He held the roll out to Reever, the closer of the twins. But Negret stalked across and took it instead. “His bookbinding tools.”
“Those are all there,” Haypotten continued nervously, glancing from the twins to Masseter, who was watching with naked curiosity as Negret tugged open the knot in the leather tie that held the roll closed. “He only left a handful.”
“Bookbinding? But I thought he made things for holding bits of holy people,” Maisie said, spreading out before her the unused cards painted with saints. Plenty of them held books, but she didn’t see how a book could be a reliquary unless you could somehow press a relic, like a flower or a butterfly, and preserve it between the pages.
“And so he did, but remember Mr. Haypotten’s tale,” Negret muttered, unrolling the oilskin to examine the instruments tucked in its pockets: styluses and awls; needles blunt, sharp, and curved; looped linen thread in a dozen colors; scoring tools and folders of bone and horn; sharp-ended scalpels and a tiny pair of scissors; minute vials of powders; and a round box he knew without having to look would contain a cake of beeswax. Then he rolled it back up and tied the leather lace closed again. “A relic isn’t always what you think. Neither, therefore, is a reliquary.” He looked up at the innkeeper. “That’s what’s missing, isn’t it? A reliquary.”
Mr. Haypotten red as a poppy now, opened his mouth. But before he could stammer out another word, Maisie spoke up. “Is it a book, then? The thing that’s missing?”
All eyes turned to her. “Yes, it was,” Mr. Haypotten managed.
“And that’s what you’ve been looking for all this time?” Maisie asked Negret. “You’ve been searching the bookshelves.”
The young man’s tattooed face cracked into a smile. He passed the roll of tools to his brother and crouched before Maisie. “You saw that, did you?”
Maisie grinned back. The words Anyone would have seen came to her tongue, but then she realized everyone hadn’t, so she just grinned wider and said, “Yes.”
Negret’s smile broadened too. “And did you find it?”
“I found something,” she replied cautiously. “It might be what you’re talking about.”
“Show me,” Negret suggested with a conspiratorial wink.
Maisie got to her feet. “It’s in my room.” She glanced apprehensively at the Haypottens, wondering if she was about to be in trouble, but the innkeeper and his wife managed encouraging faces as she left the parlor, though their expressions faded back to nervous tightness the moment she was gone.
No one spoke this time. There were no sounds but the crackling of the fire, the soft creaking of Madame Grisaille’s chair, a brief sizzle from the heating coils, and Negret’s quietly pacing feet, until Maisie returned with a small bag made of dusty purple brocade and handed it over.
“Wherever did you find it, Maisie?” Mr. Haypotten asked, his voice thick with relief. “It’s been missing these ten years, at least.”
“There’s a gap where the top stair on the way to the second floor doesn’t quite meet the wall,” Maisie explained. “It was in there, along with some little bones. I think they might’ve been a mouse once.”
Sorcha stared, then laughed. “You did used to have that cat.”
“That cat,” Mrs. Haypotten groaned.
Negret ignored all of this as he picked open the tie closing the brocade bag and reached long, reverent fingers inside. “Aha.” And he took out a very small book bound in buff-colored leather decorated with a pattern of charcoal-gray pinpoints.
Everyone in the room who was close enough to see it spotted immediately the similarity between the gray-dot pattern on the book and the patterns that lay scattered across the faces of the two Colophon brothers.
“That is a reliquary, then?” Maisie asked, peering into Negret’s palm for a closer look.
“Or is it the relic?” Sangwin asked in a grim undertone. Then he winced, along with almost everyone else in the room, as Maisie plucked the book from Negret’s hand.
Negret, however, merely nodded. “It’s both. He made his own reliquary,” he said as Maisie fanned the book open. “Not just anyone can do that.”
Mrs. Haypotten muttered a near-silent prayer and crossed herself. She had long had misgivings about what sort of leather the little book was bound in, but by unspoken agreement, she and her husband had never discussed it. This, however, seemed to be confirmation of her worst suspicions.
Oblivious to the older lady’s distress, Maisie turned page after page. All were blank. “But there’s nothing in it!”
“Not yet.” Negret gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Except that’s not quite true.” He reached out and flipped to a place where four ends of thread—it might have been waxed linen or fine gutstring—had been left uncut after having been used to tie two knots holding the pages in place. “And see here.” He pointed to where the thick paper that had sandwiched the threads and knots held a visible pattern of impressions like a branching river, or the lines of a palm. “Thread your kitstring, then tie certain knots, leave certain lengths, press the pages, and sometimes you can divine your fortune. So perhaps there is something to be read here, after all.”
“Seems late for telling that fellow’s fortune,” Masseter observed drily.
Negret lifted his shoulders. “Depends on what one wants to know.”
“Could you tell our fortunes?” Maisie asked eagerly, handing the reliquary volume back.
Negret raised an eyebrow. “There’s peril in telling a fortune. I’m not sure anyone here would risk it.”
Maisie all but hopped up and down. “I would! Tell mine!”
A shadow passed over his face. “Another time, perhaps. You have to sew the stitches and tie the knots yourself, or it won’t be your destiny that’s written. And
