I LINGERED OUTSIDE THE Archives after the trial, though I hadn’t meant to. The stone was cool against my back, my feet stitched there by a thread I could not see. And for once, silence asked nothing of me.
Somewhere, a bell called out. Its voice came soft and distant, blurred by stone and the stretch of empty streets.
“You’ve been thinking too loud.”
I turned and found Elodin standing there, framed by shadows, as though the silence had simply decided to let him through. His robe hung crooked. His hair was wild. His eyes held that particular dark depth that I’d only seen in the Eld.
“Walk with me,” he said. It wasn’t an invitation. It simply assumed. Then he smiled, as though he’d just told a joke only he could hear. Before I could return it, he turned and began moving along the uneven cobbles, his steps an easy glide. The thread pulled free and my feet followed.
Elodin wove us through the campus, bare feet moving easily from cobblestones to gravel to dirt. While he let the silence stretch between us, I found myself falling into his rhythm, joining his pace. Then, “You’re thinking about Herma.”
“Of course I am,” I said, though the words felt too clumsy for the weight I wanted them to carry. “It feels wrong. Too quick. It’s like rushing through a verse before the final chord has time to settle.”
We walked on. Elodin hummed something low, more vibration than music. “Herma hated chaos,” Elodin said. His words were soft, half a thought spoken aloud. “He hated what chaos did to people. Have you never noticed it? The scholars, the errant students, the fools trying to be more than they are? Herma pulled at their ends. Drew them steady. Anchored them.”
I hadn’t, truth be told.
Elodin looked up. Above us, clouds unraveled into long pale threads on the wind. “Now his knots are loose,” he said. “We’ll see which ones hold.”
When the cemetery came into view, the grave was wrong. Not in its shape. Not in the way the stone sat, cold and square and still. Herma never wanted grandeur. He never wanted statues or carved names. But this ending felt wrong in a different way.
The stone lay flat. The edges were too straight. The lines were too clean. It all fit together, smooth and silent, like a finished song.
But where was the knot that gave it meaning? The complexity? The weight? It was no grave for a man as full of untied stories as Herma had been.
Elodin stood beside me. He did not move. The wild restlessness I knew so well was gone, subdued by the quiet of this place. His shoulders slumped, carrying weight I couldn’t see. For a long time, neither of us spoke. When at last he found his voice, it was low, almost gentle, as if the silence itself were fabric that a careless word might tear.
“The art of listening,” he said, “is more than Naming. You already know this. But you won’t master it here.”
Did Elodin know I’d had a hand in Hemme’s downfall? Was this his way of telling me to leave before someone pulled at my loose threads? But as I opened my mouth, I felt the air itself pressing against my words. I let them fall away. The answer wouldn’t change anything.
Elodin stayed a moment longer, murmuring something that sounded like a prayer. Then he turned and walked away, leaving me there with my thoughts and the hush of the burial ground.