Unhallowed (Rath and Rune #1) - Jordan L. Hawk Page 0,16

that looked suspiciously clean, a bit of tobacco juice or tea would return the stain. As an employee of the library, O’Neil would know exactly which pages were marked with pencil, so it wasn’t even a matter of patience to find and remove those.

“Settling in, Mr. Rune?” Rath asked from the doorway.

Ves started. The sunlight through the glass dome turned Rath’s hair to gold, and sparked off his silver-framed glasses. He wore a blue vest whose color brought out the hidden sapphire in his hazel eyes, and held a battered book that looked rather the worse for wear.

Had he been the one to leave the ominous note? “Yes,” Ves answered, careful to keep any emotion from his face. “Thank you, Mr. Rath.”

Rath snorted but made no further comment, only carrying the book over to one of the tables. “This is the personal diary of Glen Parry, a man from Widdershins who fought in the Revolutionary War. An invaluable account we were recently fortunate enough to acquire from his family. As you can see it is very badly in need of repair.” His fingers lingered a moment on the mildewed cover; they were long and elegant, the opposite of Ves’s own broad, blunt hands.

“Of course. Is there any urgency?” Ves asked.

“Dr. Norris of the American History Department wishes to examine it as soon as possible, and I fear his rough handling will cause further damage if he receives it in this condition.”

Rath’s eyes met his as he spoke, and Ves understood this was a test. Rath didn’t seem to believe he could do an adequate job at repairing this crumbling, damaged volume with its signatures falling out and its cover ruined.

He’d definitely been the one to leave the note.

What Rath didn’t know was that Ves’s entire life had been a series of tests. And yes, he’d failed so, so many. But this he could do.

“I understand,” Ves said, letting a feral edge slip into his smile. “You may count on me, Mr. Rath.”

Ves’s grandfather had taught him that the art of binding wasn’t merely concerned with basic repair or replacement, but beauty as well. There was nothing quite so satisfying as beginning with a stack of loose folios and ending with a handsome volume.

He examined the diary Rath had left with him with a careful eye. Its condition was indeed poor. What sort of barbarians had let a book reach this state of deterioration? A good thing it had come to the library, where it would be treated with the respect it deserved.

The rot-damaged cover would need replacing. As the work within was one-of-a-kind, he decided to favor the most durable materials at hand: morocco leather, dyed red with cochineal, half-bound with cloth, and vellum corners.

Though the library bindery had all the needed tools at hand, Ves had brought his own small kit with him as well, wrapped in a leather pouch. The awl, needle, thread, binder’s knife, and bone folder had all been gifts from Grandfather, and the only mementos he’d taken from his childhood home.

He removed the signatures from the old binding with his knife, marking them alphabetically near the fold with a soft pencil so as not to confuse their order. After, he went through them carefully, removing any bits of cut thread and separating the sheets. Torn pages were mended with application of paste and thin onion-skin paper on either side of the leaf. Some pages were sadly mildewed in places, so he prepared a solution of oxalic acid and washed them with a damp sponge, followed by a solution of dilute hydrochloric acid and a rinse in cold water, before placing them to dry.

The motions of his art soothed him, and for a few hours all worry vanished. At lunchtime, Ves left the bindery behind and made his way to the library proper. Miss Endicott stood behind the desk near the entrance, her expression rather fixed. The man across from her looked as though he counted his age in the triple digits, but his reedy voice carried in the silence.

“The cover was green,” he said.

Miss Endicott’s smile grew a trifle strained. “Our periodicals are generally bound in green half-calf. Can you recall anything further?”

He nodded, his few remaining wisps of white hair bobbing in time with his skull. “Oh yes. It had the word ‘journal’ in the title.”

Which narrowed it down to one of several hundred potential publications that Ves was familiar with, having handled their binding in Boston.

“The Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera?” Miss