The library had become her externalized mind.
A skull of stone and wood filled with dormant knowledge, with her as its sole thinking consciousness.
The name Jun-Ho Park was the starting point, the first domino she had to topple to have any hope of seeing the line that led to The Rook collapse.
But how to give the order to her soldier when the general herself was under siege? Every corridor in this manor was hostile territory, every servant a potential spy, and Kenji, the hawk, was a constant, silent threat.
She could not risk sending another direct message via one of Valerius's trusted men. Repetition would breed suspicion.
She needed a new method, a new channel of communication. And for that, she needed to manipulate the master of the house once more.
When Valerius joined her that evening, she had perfected her role.
She was no longer just the Oracle troubled by spirits, but the mystic scholar absorbed in a momentous piece of research.
He found her sitting at the large reading table, books open around her (treatises on ancient philosophy she had chosen at random from the shelves), the file on the Great Dock Fire carefully concealed.
She raised her eyes to him, and he saw in them a deep fatigue and an intense focus.
"You are working too hard, my marvel," he said, placing his hands on her shoulders and beginning to massage her neck.
His hands were skilled, but the gesture was less a caress than an act of ownership.
Catherine allowed it, tilting her head to give him better access.
"The secrets of the dead are a complex riddle, Magistrate.
Their voices are faint, confused.
To hear them clearly, to decipher the warnings meant for you, I require catalysts. Anchors to focus my vision."
"Catalysts?" he asked, his interest always piqued by her occult jargon.
"What do you need? Gems? Relics? I can procure anything."
"No," she replied, her voice low and weary.
"Power is not always found in valuable objects. Sometimes, it resides in the symbolic purity of simple things.
I need charcoal from a willow tree, to draw seals of silence. Parchment made from reeds, so as not to offend the water spirits tied to this tragedy.
And fresh ink, mixed with a grain of sea salt, to reveal the truth hidden in tears."
She had invented it all, choosing elements that sounded both esoteric and perfectly mundane.
"Scribe's supplies, then," Valerius concluded, a little disappointed but pragmatic. "That is simple. I can have them brought from my own cabinet."
"No," she insisted gently.
"The purity of intent is essential. They must not be sullied by your own power, or the spirits will see only you. They must be collected by an innocent hand."
She paused.
"I would ask my instrument at the Scriptorium, but the task I have given him is already too important to distract him."
She let the problem hang in the air, knowing Valerius's ego and his impatience for results would force him to find a solution. He did not disappoint.
"Of course, of course," he said, stroking her hair.
"We won't disturb your agent. I will send someone else. A kitchen boy, perhaps. An innocent enough hand for you?"
"Perfect," Catherine whispered.
"Someone whose presence at the market or an apothecary will raise no questions."
An hour later, a young boy of barely sixteen, his face covered in freckles and his hands red from washing dishes, stood timidly at the library door.
His name was Leo. Valerius had ordered him to obey the "lady" in all things.
Catherine handed him a small purse containing a few copper coins and a note.
The note listed the ingredients she needed. But on the back, folded into the center to be invisible unless one knew where to look, she had written three words in a tiny, almost illegible script.
"You will go to the finest paper supplier in the city, on the Goldsmiths' Square," she instructed him in a soft voice.
"You will give him this list. He may not understand all of it. If he has questions, tell him to consult the clerk Mathieu at the Scriptorium, that it is an urgent request from me. Mathieu will know exactly what is required. Understood?"
"Yes, My Lady," the boy said, intimidated and excited by this unusual mission.
He took the note and the money and hurried away.
The plan was in motion.
The supplier, of course, would not understand the request for reed parchment. He would send the boy to the Scriptorium. Leo, following orders, would mention her name and the Oracle's to Mathieu.
Mathieu, alerted, would ask to see the list to help, and would find the secret message.
It was a convoluted path, but far less suspicious than a direct transmission.
Once the boy was gone, Catherine felt a wave of satisfaction. She had established a new line of communication.
She returned to her table, closing her eyes to try and follow the boy's journey, to feel the moment the message was passed.
She cast out her consciousness, searching for Mathieu's familiar thread in the hive of the city.
She found it, an anxious but steady glow. She waited.
But as she focused, she perceived something else.
It was a sensation she had never known.
A thread. But it was not a thread of emotion, power, or connection like the ones she knew.
It was a thread as fine as a spider's web, of an absolute black that seemed to absorb light. It emitted no heat, no emotion.
It was cold, clinical, and it was probing her.
This was not Kenji's watchful, physical surveillance. It was a psychic scan. Silent, subtle, and incredibly invasive.
She had the horrible sensation of being an ant observed under a magnifying glass by an invisible entomologist.
The thread did not come from anyone in the manor. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Panicked, she brutally severed her vision, folding back into herself. Her heart was hammering. The sensation vanished instantly.
Was it her imagination?
The backlash from her contact with the echoes in the file? Or… was it something else?
The idea that she might not be the only one who could see the threads, or that someone or something could detect her when she used her power, was a terrifying prospect.
The huntress had just realized, with a cold certainty, that the forest might be far darker and populated by far stranger predators than she had ever imagined.
She might not be the only spider in this web.