Chapter 47: The Muddy Bootprint

The legate's smile was patient, pleasant, and utterly immovable. He stood in the middle of the hermitage's main room, his black robes brushing against the rough wooden floorboards, and he had just asked—in the most courteous voice imaginable—to speak with each of the seven knights individually.

"Just a brief word with each man," he said. "I find that individual accounts often provide a clearer picture than a group interview. The memory is a strange thing. One man recalls a detail another has missed entirely."

Catherine kept her hands folded in front of her, fingers interlaced. The morning light coming through the small window caught the dust motes floating in the air between them. "Of course. I'll send for them."

"They're in the village gathering supplies, you said?"

"They should be returning shortly. I can have them called in as they arrive."

The legate inclined his head. "Excellent. I'll begin with the first one who comes back."

She turned toward the door, her mind already racing through the possibilities. The seven men had dispersed into the surrounding marshland and villages. Günter was supposed to be posing as a farmer checking his traps. Anton and Martin had taken the horses to a stable two miles east. Josef had stayed closest, supposedly fetching bread from the village bakery.

But the crates. Six crates of inert golden eyes, submerged in the marsh not two hundred yards from the hermitage. If the legate insisted on interviewing each man separately, he would notice the gaps. The swiss guard outside had sharp eyes, the kind that remembered details. If one of the knights stumbled on a question about where exactly they had been the last few days—

Josef appeared at the edge of the clearing first, as though summoned by her thoughts. He carried a cloth-wrapped loaf of bread under one arm, and his boots were clean. He had been walking the long way around the marsh to avoid the mud. Good.

"Josef," she called. "His Excellency would like a word with you."

Josef glanced at the legate, then back at her. Something flickered in his eyes—a question, quickly suppressed. He handed her the bread and followed the legate into the hermitage's small inner chamber, where the wooden cross hung above the simple cot.

Catherine stood in the main room, listening through the thin walls. The legate's voice was calm and steady, asking about the night of the severance. Where had the ceremony taken place? What had Josef seen? Had Catherine touched each of the golden eyes?

Josef's answers came measured, careful. He had rehearsed this story before, they all had. The severance had taken place here, before the cross. Catherine had confessed, renounced, and the power had left her.

The legate asked about the days after. Where had the knights gone? What had they done?

Josef hesitated. "We gathered supplies, Your Excellency. Wood for the fire, food from the villages, fresh water."

"All seven of you?"

"At different times, yes."

The legate's voice was thoughtful. "And what about the crates? I understand several crates of golden eyes were brought to the hermitage before the severance."

Catherine's hands went cold. She had told the legate the crates were sent to Rome. Someone had told him otherwise.

Josef's pause stretched a heartbeat too long. "Crates, Your Excellency?"

"The ones your party transported from Vienna. I was informed six crates were dispatched to this location."

"That must have been before I joined the escort," Josef said. "I came later, with the supply train."

The legate made a small sound, acknowledging the answer, but Catherine could hear the doubt in his silence. She moved to the doorway of the inner chamber, forcing a smile onto her face.

"Forgive me, Your Excellency, but I wonder if I might offer a suggestion," she said, stepping inside. "Rather than interviewing each man separately, perhaps it would be more useful for me to demonstrate the severance ritual again. A public act, witnessed by yourself and my companions, confirming the power's release."

The legate turned toward her, one eyebrow lifting slightly. "A demonstration?"

"I would kneel before the cross, as I did that night, and repeat the renunciation. The knights would bear witness. You would see for yourself that the ceremony was genuine, that the network is gone, that I am as mortal as any woman."

It was a gamble. The ritual required the interference ring—the seven men standing in formation around her to dampen the network's signal. Without the ring, there was no ritual, just a woman kneeling in front of a piece of wood. But the legate didn't know that. And if the knights gathered close enough around her, the ring would form naturally, shielding her from whatever threads remained.

"It would be a comfort," the legate said slowly, "to see the ceremony performed as it occurred. Though I confess some curiosity about the precise arrangement. You said the seven men stood around you?"

"At a distance of a few paces," Catherine said. "Forming a circle, as witnesses."

"Interesting. And they were all present for the entire ceremony?"

"They were."

The legate's smile returned, and Catherine had the uncomfortable feeling that she had just walked into a trap of her own making. He was too sharp, this man. Rome had sent someone who knew how to ask questions.

"I would be honored to observe," he said. "But first, let me finish speaking with your companion. We were discussing the crates."

She had no choice but to retreat, letting the legate return his attention to Josef. The questions went on, probing gently at the edges of Josef's story. Where had they slept the night before the severance? In the hermitage or outside? What had they eaten? Who had lit the candles?

Josef answered each one with increasing strain, his voice growing flatter as he struggled to keep the details straight. The memory had been scrubbed clean of the week's activities, replaced with a simple narrative that could not hold up against this level of scrutiny.

Catherine stepped back into the main room, her heart hammering against her ribs. She needed a distraction, something that would pull the legate away from Josef long enough for her to think.

Through the window, she saw one of the Swiss guards walking the perimeter of the clearing. He was tall, broad-shouldered, his halberd resting on his shoulder. His gaze swept across the marsh, tracking along the reeds where the mud was soft and dark.

And then he stopped.

He was looking at something on the ground near the edge of the treeline. Catherine followed his gaze and felt her stomach drop.

A bootprint. Large, deep, clearly fresh. It led from the direction of the marsh, where the reeds thinned out into open mud. Günter's bootprint. Günter, who had taken the long way around to avoid the house, who had been wading through the channels to sink the crates, who had not thought to wipe his boots before circling back toward the village.

The Swiss guard glanced toward the hermitage, then back at the bootprint. He did not move, but Catherine saw the way his fingers tightened on the shaft of his halberd. He had noticed. He was filing it away.

The legate's voice continued from the inner chamber, patient and probing. "...and if I asked you to show me where the severance took place, the exact spot, you could point to it?"

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"And you're certain it was here, in this hermitage?"

"Quite certain."

"Then tell me—why is there a bootprint caked with marsh mud leading from the reeds toward the east, where I'm told no one has walked this morning?"

Catherine stepped back from the window. The legate's question hung in the air, and she could picture the look on Josef's face—the blankness of a man trying to remember something that had been deliberately erased.

There was only one way to salvage this. She had to get to the marsh before the guard could investigate, and she had to do it in a way that framed the crates as part of her story, not a concealment.

She grabbed the wooden bucket from beside the door and stepped outside. "Your Excellency," she called through the window, keeping her voice light, "I need to fetch fresh water for the tea. I won't be a moment."

The legate appeared in the doorway, his expression curious. "Of course, Your Majesty. Take your time."

She turned toward the marsh, the bucket swinging at her side, and began to walk the path that led down toward the reeds. The mud squelched beneath her boots, soft and brown, and she could feel the Swiss guard's eyes on her back—two of them, tracking her every step.

The shovel was propped against the woodpile at the edge of the clearing. She passed it without slowing, counting the steps until she was out of sight behind the first wall of reeds. Then she doubled back, grabbed the shovel, and pressed forward into the marsh.

The water was cold and brown, rising to her ankles, then her knees. She moved carefully, trying to remember the exact spot where Günter had sunk the crates. There—a patch of reeds that had been bent and broken, a channel of disturbed mud leading deeper into the marsh.

She drove the shovel into the muck and began to dig.