Chapter 51 – Honey

The house on Midriver Row was indeed in a completely different league from the university housing. Three stories of neatly grouted limestone, narrow windows with glass panes, and a red door with brass hardware that almost glowed in the dark from a distance, illuminated by the Essence lamp above the entrance.

Johann opened the door before she could even knock, as if he had been standing at the window waiting and looking for her.

“Right on time,” he said, stepping aside to let her in. “I appreciate that in a woman.”

“And I appreciate men who keep their promises.” She tapped on the thick wall of the doorway. “Thick walls.”

He laughed softly and took her cloak.

The interior of the house was dark and quiet. The entrance hall was narrow, and the floor was tiled with fine stone. An expensive tapestry with a hunting motif hung on the wall, though it was likely part of the house’s original furnishings and had not been chosen by Johann.

The exterior walls bore solid, conventional protective patterns, cleanly crafted and well-maintained, as one would likely find at any wealthy Essence Weaver’s home.

Johann led her up the stairs, and when Valentina activated her Sight, something she’d been doing almost involuntarily lately whenever she entered an unfamiliar space, she saw exactly what she’d expected, which was nothing.

On their way up, they passed two closed doors on the first floor, protected by dense, multi-layered security patterns so tightly interwoven that she couldn’t even begin to make out their structure from this distance.

“His study, presumably,” Vyxara said casually. “Well protected.”

Valentina thought of Cosimo’s private quarters in the ducal palace in Dusktown, of the locked door in his study, behind which the Duke kept his most confidential correspondence and which was just as heavily secured. And she was reminded of Professor Veilford’s office at the university, in front of which one literally had the feeling of running into an invisible wall, so dense were his protective patterns.

A man of Johann’s caliber, who had conducted research across the entire continent and whose work on the Grundgestalt alone was valuable enough to attract envious rivals and thieves, naturally secured his research documents. Great Essence Weavers were a secretive bunch.

She tore herself away from examining the patterns and followed Johann to the top floor.

The bedroom was large and cozy. A wide bed with a dark woolen blanket and more pillows than a single man needed stood against the back wall, flanked by two dimmed Essence Lamps. To the side, the room opened onto a sitting area with two upholstered chairs and a low table on which stood a carafe of wine. Thick carpets covered the floor. And in front of the window, which looked out onto the quiet Midriver Row, a dining table for two was set with white linen, heavy silver cutlery, and silver plates.

“Sit down,” Johann said, pulling out the chair for her and pouring wine.

On the table were already bowls of outrageously expensive pickled artichokes and thin slices of a smoked meat that Valentina couldn’t immediately identify.

“Wild boar ham,” said Johann, following her gaze. “From the woods south of Bridgewater. A local delicacy, I’m told.”

Valentina tried a slice. The meat was aromatic, with a smoky aftertaste that paired perfectly with the wine. “If that’s the standard, then your last dinner was indeed modest.”

“I was better prepared this time.”

He brought the main course in himself from an adjoining room. Roasted quail with winter vegetables glazed in butter and honey, served with fresh bread that was still warm and whose aroma filled the entire room.

“Did you cook this yourself?” Valentina asked, genuinely impressed.

“The butcher’s wife three blocks down prepared the quail for me, and the bread is from a baker on the corner, whom I paid far too much money to bake me a fresh loaf out of schedule.” He sat down across from her and raised his mug. “But the vegetables are mine.”

They ate, and they drank the excellent wine, and the conversation flowed as effortlessly as it had last time, perhaps even more easily, because the initial tension of the unknown had given way to a certain budding familiarity.

“Tell me about Palewood,” he said as he carefully cut his quail into pieces. “How do you grow up as an Essence Weaver in a village that’s probably never seen one before?”

“I mean, in a sense, the village has definitely seen Essence Weavers before,” said Valentina. “It’s been a while, but I think there have even been two in the last fifty years. One was a traveling healer who came for a few weeks and treated people when my grandmother was a young woman. And I suppose the other was my great-aunt Mabel. The village thought she was crazy because she had a habit of talking to trees, but from what my mother told me about her, I think she was probably able to see Essence and nobody noticed it back then. But there’s never been a real, genuine Essence Weaver in the village.”

“Until you came along.” Johann laughed. “How did they find out?”

“When I was six, I scared my mother to death by starting to talk about how the fields were glowing.” Valentina took a sip of wine. “My father dismissed it as childish talk at first, but my mother was worried and dragged me to the local Ember.”

“Let me guess, that just made everything worse?”

“Oh no, I understand perfectly well how you might think that, but that’s not actually the case. He is a strict and devout and mind-numbingly boring man, but a good one, and fortunately he was educated enough to recognize the signs and not mistake it for a punishment from the Martyr or anything like that. He arranged for an examiner to come from the city, who confirmed that I have the gift of seeing Essence, and after that he taught me to read and write. Without him, I probably would never have gone to Bridgewater.”

“What was that like?” Johann asked. “Going from such a small village suddenly to a university in a big city like Bridgewater?”

Valentina thought for a moment. “It was as if I’d spent my whole life underwater and suddenly surfaced, and everything was so loud and so bright and so overwhelming that I could barely breathe, or maybe I just had to learn how to do it first, how to breathe.” She gave a wry smile. “And then came the moment when I stepped into the library for the first time and realized that everything I’d known up to that point wasn’t even a fraction of a fraction of the whole. That was both the most exciting and the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.”

Johann’s gaze was attentive and warm. “And your family?” he asked. “How do they deal with what you’ve become? Are they proud of you?”

“They’re proud,” said Valentina. “But it gets harder with every visit. My younger siblings are growing up so fast that I probably barely recognize them the next time I come home. And I am…” She hesitated. “I think I’ve become a stranger to them, in a way.”

Johann nodded slowly. “Oh, I am quite estranged from my family, but I had a different starting point,” he said, leaning back. “My family were merchants in Agrippin, quite successful ones at that so we certainly never lacked money. But my father had a different hunger, so to speak. He was desperate to rise to nobility, and when it turned out that I actually possessed the ability to see Essence, he saw a chance to achieve that. I guess it was like a gift from the Martyr for him. To him, a son at the Academy of Sankt Hildemar meant prestige, invitations to the right circles, and perhaps even a minor noble title through some machinations.” He grinned an ugly, mocking grin. “What he hadn’t expected was that his son would actually be obsessed with the subject itself. I didn’t care about the social implications in the slightest, that didn’t interest me. My interest lay in in the scholarly art, in the truly exciting aspects of Essence Weaving and the most uncomfortable questions.”

“And he didn’t like that?”

“Quite right.” He chuckled. “But then again, not many scholars liked it either. You know, at Sankt Hildemar, there is a tradition whereby every first-year student is allowed to ask the rector one question during a public debate. Usually most ask something flattering, well-tailored to his liking, but I asked the rector why the academy had been teaching the same basic geometric assumptions for two hundred years, even though at least three of them were demonstrably incomplete if one took Phrastian von Niederfels’s research seriously.”

“What did he answer?”

“Nothing, basically. The rector and my professors were not at all pleased.” Johann snorted with contempt. “How dare I quote the work of a demon worshipper? I always found that petty. Who cares about the source of knowledge, as long as it’s true? But that’s just how the faculty was, still is really. Most of them certainly recognized that I had talent, yes, but they preferred it if I exercised that talent within the bounds of what they considered acceptable.”

“And at some point,” Johann continued, more pensive now, “it dawned on me that the conventional understanding of the scholarly art, however brilliant it might be in some details, only scratches the surface. That beneath what we are taught is a deeper order that no one, except maybe the Martyr, ever saw. That some of them don’t even want to see it, because it calls into question too much of what they think is certain.”

Valentina had to smile. “I think you enjoy making others uncomfortable, to be honest.”

“Of course, I enjoy making those who have no answers uncomfortable.” He leaned back and looked at her. “But you understand that there’s more. You and I are just the same like that. I saw it in your face when, in my first lecture, among all those vain cocks and oh-so-great scholars, you asked the only question worth asking.”

“He really knows exactly how to get you going,” Vyxara laughed as the heat rose to Valentina’s cheeks.

From there the conversation went to his time at the academy in Othal to his journeys through the Free City-States in Northern Padavo, to a story about an old scholar who had thrown Johann out of his private library because Johann had called one of his pet theories “intellectually incontinent,” and Valentina laughed heartily and had a fantastic time.

And then, when dessert was finished and the wine was nearly gone, Johann leaned across the table and kissed her, and he tasted of wine, and Valentina closed her eyes and let herself fall into the intoxicating kiss.

Then he took her hand and led her to the bed.