A Quiet Place for the Hook

The scraping below stopped the moment Harrow Venn stepped toward the stairs. It began again when he shifted back toward the door.

Orris kept one hand on the cellar latch. Beneath his palm, the wood gave a small, regular shiver. The sealed workshop lay below the shop, behind lead sheeting and runes; the hook inside its box had found the door and was testing it with patient little strokes.

“Stay where you are, please,” Orris told Harrow.

Harrow’s gauntlets settled at his sides. His repaired collar sat neatly against the seam at his neck. “I shall endeavor to remain uninteresting.”

At the counter, Veyra Silt held a steaming cup of abyssal coffee in both hands. She had arrived for her usual dose and now watched the cellar door with solemn concentration. “It has recognized the road it came by.”

“It has recognized something,” Orris said. “I need to find out what.”

The scraping resumed. A thin tick, then a dragged rasp. Orris heard no voice through the door, only the faint pressure of an urge: back, back, back. The hook’s feeling came through the wood as a hard, narrow insistence. His perception offered no answer about where the hook had come from or what had sent it. It told him only that the thing was anxious and searching.

He opened the cellar door. The lead-lined box had shifted a finger’s width across the stone shelf. Its lid remained secured. From inside came another rasp.

“Could it have followed you here?” Veyra asked Harrow.

“I have traveled through worse company,” Harrow replied. “I cannot attest to its manners.”

Orris took a brass hook from the wall and lowered it through the box’s small inspection slot. He touched the tool against the bone fragment. It snapped toward the metal with enough force to bend the brass.

He withdrew it. The hook scraped again, this time toward the stairs.

Orris looked at Harrow’s collar. The seam he had mended was sound. He could still see the new stitches where the old ones had stretched around the Rift-born barb. The collar had been in contact with the hook for who knew how long. That made it a reasonable answer, though a dangerous one to test.

“Sir,” he said, “I need you to take off the collar and set it on the counter. Then I need you to step outside.”

Harrow’s hands went to the fastenings. He paused with his fingers at the clasp. “Will removing it strain the seam?”

“I’ll support it while you undo the latches. The repair will hold.”

“Very well.”

Veyra put her coffee down and stood. She had the careful stillness of someone trying not to disturb a prayer. “I can hold the door.”