Litany of Winter

Two mornings later, Neumann put a thick black book in front of Severin and told him not to read it.

The corners had been repaired. Different paper showed along the edge, and a newer index had been pasted over the old one. Red amendment stamps marked several pages. Whole paragraphs had been crossed through.

Martin opened his and frowned. ”That supposed to be reassuring?”

”No,” Neumann said. ”It’s supposed to stop you following instructions that got replaced.”

Martin looked back at the crossed-out paragraph. ”Fair enough, I guess.”

The nine sat around two joined tables in a room off the training hall. Loose forms and folders covered the middle, while a stack of slates sat at one end. There were no weapons or gloves. Severin preferred the gloves.

He opened near the front. The first page listed sections and numbers, followed by another list correcting the first. Tabs broke the book into working sections for quarantine, artifact contact, creature notes and witness procedure. Reports filled another section. Farther back were casualty priorities and retreat rules, with jurisdiction indexed separately.

”Field books change,” Neumann said. ”Procedures get replaced. If somebody hands you one in the field, check the amendments before you trust a word in it.”

Severin turned another page. A boxed heading caught his eye.

INITIATE. FOR TRAINING USE ONLY. NO INDEPENDENT FIELD AUTHORITY.

Beneath it, the page divided responsibilities by rank.

Pilgrim came first, then Warden, Inquisitor and Master.

Severin found Pilgrim easier than the paragraphs underneath it. Marked field member with limited independent authority. May secure an occult scene pending senior review.

Wardens were senior field members who had proved themselves enough to take harder assignments and, when needed, command small teams. Inquisitors were usually attached to royalty or other important leaders as protectors. The Master only sent them into the field for critical cases or when an Order member went rogue. The Master led the Order itself.

”So if we get the mark, we’re called Pilgrims?”

Paul had already reached the same page. ”Looks like it.”

Neumann heard them. ”That’s correct.”

”What if we decide against taking the pact?” Madeleine asked.

”Then you don’t become a Pilgrim. There are other ways to be useful around here.”

Neumann pulled the first folder from the stack. ”There’s no shame in refusing the pact. The Order still needs clerks, healers, smiths, quartermasters and archivists, to name a few.”

He glanced at Anna. ”And if you do take it and your mark gives you something useful for keeping people alive, you can still become a healer.”

”And what if we still want to work in the field?” Martin asked.

”Without the pact, you’re no use as a field operative. So if that’s what you want, you’re stuck taking it.”

He dropped the folder onto the table.

”That’s enough of that. Let’s see what you can do with an actual case.”

The folder contained copies of an old Imperial Police report and a railway movement sheet. A rough plan showed the signal cabin beside a junction outside Kronvaal.

According to the report, a passenger train had stopped short of a freight train crossing onto the main line. Seven passengers were injured in the braking, but nobody died.

An Imperial Police officer found the signalman and his assistant arguing beside the lever frame. The freight crew claimed the signal had changed for them, while the passenger driver said his line had been clear until the last bend.

Police had also found a round brass object beneath the signal desk. One witness heard telegraph clicks from the cabin after the line had been disconnected.

Paul stopped reading. ”Well,” he said.

Neumann gave each of them a single-page form. ”Final findings aren’t in your copies. Separate what the file proves from what you’re assuming, then work out who has authority over each part. Tell me what you’d preserve and what you’d do next.”

Thomas turned the form over. ”There’s another side.”

”Yeah. There fucking is.”

The room settled into paper and scratching pencils.

Severin started with the movement sheet. Columns of times, train numbers, route codes and signatures ran down the page. He understood freight. That did little to help with what railway clerks wrote about it.

Across from him, Paul drew the telegraph entries onto his slate and began translating the abbreviations under his breath.

Peters rebuilt the witness statements by time, laying each sheet in order along the table.

Hoffmann read the police report twice. ”They did this properly.”

Thomas looked up. ”Nearly killed a train full of people.”

”The police. They kept the crews apart and took separate statements before locking the cabin.”

”Shouldn’t the Order have taken over?”

Hoffmann tapped the page. ”Taken over what?”

”The scene.”

”The object, maybe. The collision’s still police and railway business unless there’s evidence that thing caused it.”

Severin looked at him. ”You sound like Neumann.”

”Fuck off,” Hoffmann said.

Neumann ignored them.

Rafael had found the section of the field book covering shared investigations. He laid it open between Hoffmann and Peters.

”If the police are already involved, the Order doesn’t take over the whole case. They keep the criminal investigation. We deal with whatever brought us there.”

Peters looked at the brass object on the sketch. ”So that belongs to us?”

”If it’s actually occult.”

”And the cabin?”

Rafael checked the page again. ”Only as much of it as we need to examine the object safely.”

Hoffmann nodded. ”Which means you don’t throw the police out of their own investigation because you found something strange.”

Severin had finally made sense of three columns on the railway sheet.

The freight had eighteen loaded wagons, and according to the movement register, it entered the junction at 8:19 and cleared the passenger line at 8:22.

He read it again, then looked at the junction plan. The freight line climbed through the points before it reached the main line.

”That’s bollocks.”

Peters stopped writing. ”What is?”

”The timing.”

Severin pushed the sheet toward the middle and put a finger beneath the times. ”Eighteen loaded wagons from a stop, uphill through those points. Three minutes to pull across and clear the line?”

Thomas leaned over. ”You worked rail?”

”Not really. Mostly in the freight yard.”

Thomas studied the drawing. ”He’s right. Unless the engine was already moving.”

”It wasn’t.” Severin found the line in the first statement. ”Says here they were waiting at the stop signal.”

Rafael checked it himself.

Martin scratched out something on his form. ”So the register’s wrong.”

”Something in it is,” Peters said.

”Same fucking thing.”

”Not if you’re trying to work out what happened.”

Severin wrote beneath FACTS ESTABLISHED:

Signalman falsified movement register after near collision.

Peters was already building a new timeline beside him.

Neumann waited until most of them had finished sorting through the first packet, then gave each table a second one.

The railway’s duplicate telegraph slips were inside with the freight consist. There was also a maintenance complaint and a few short medical notes on the injured passengers.

Anna took the medical page first. ”Cuts, bruises, one broken wrist, two head injuries. All consistent with the braking. Nothing here suggests an attack.”

The maintenance complaint concerned a sticking signal lever reported twice that month. Thomas read it with interest until the inspection record showed it had been repaired three days before the incident.

Paul spread the telegraph slips beside his slate.

”The cabin received a hold order at 8:14,” he said. ”Passenger still approaching. Then at 8:17, the freight crew asks for clearance.”

”Answer?” Hoffmann asked.

Paul shook his head. ”No transmitted clearance from the junction office.”

Martin pointed at the witness statement. ”But the freight crew says they got one.”

”They said the signal changed.”

”That’s not the same thing,” Peters said.

Severin looked back at the freight consist. Eighteen wagons loaded with stone and machine parts. The sort of train that took its time even when every man involved wanted it gone.

He traced the route on the cabin plan. ”They were still asking for clearance at seventeen. That gives them less than five minutes to get that load clear.”

Peters moved one statement farther down his timeline.

Rafael was comparing handwriting on the movement sheet with the duplicate station record. ”This entry was added after the ones around it.”

”How can you tell?” Martin asked.

”Look at the spacing. Whoever wrote it had less room than the entries above and below.”

Peters leaned across. ”And the 8:22 time uses a different pencil.”

Neumann handed them the third and final packet.

The first page carried an Order stamp. The brass object had been tested for six days. It reproduced short sequences of nearby sounds after delays ranging from less than an hour to several hours, including voices and telegraph clicks. It also repeated ordinary knocks.

No effect on the telegraph mechanism itself had been observed. Testing found no compulsion or physical harm.

Paul read the last line twice. ”So the clicks after disconnection were real.”

”Copied,” Madeleine said.

She took one of the witness pages from the pile. ”This woman heard someone say, ’Keep us through the dark’ in the cabin after everyone had left.”

Anna looked at her. ”You know it?”

”It’s from an ordinary evening prayer.”

Martin frowned at the brass object sketch. ”So the damn thing heard somebody praying and played it back later.”

”Looks that way.”

Hoffmann turned to the authority section of the form. ”The police keep the falsified record and handle the negligence case. The railway deals with its own operating inquiry, and we take the object and whatever we need to work out what it does.”

”And what do the police get told?” Neumann asked.

”That it repeats sounds, and that testing found it didn’t affect the telegraph.”

”You’d tell them all that?”

”If they need it to make sense of the witness statements and rule the object out as the cause, yes.”

Neumann nodded once.

Peters slid his finished timeline into the middle. The signal had changed before the passenger train passed, and the register entry claiming otherwise had been squeezed in later. Nothing in their material established who altered it.

Severin looked down at his form.

Signalman falsified movement register after near collision.

Neumann reached him before he could rub it out. ”Who altered it?”

Severin looked at the evidence again. ”Either him or the assistant.”

”Is that what you wrote?”

”No.”

”Then what did you write?”

Severin read the line back.

Neumann tapped it with one finger. ”The record was altered, and the signal changed when it shouldn’t have. Two men are blaming each other. What proves which one changed the entry?”

”None of it.”

”So fix it.”

Severin crossed out the sentence.

Movement entry altered after original recording. Person responsible not established.

Neumann moved on, and the final findings came around after they submitted their forms.

According to the final report, the assistant signalman had admitted changing the signal before the passenger train passed, then altering the movement book to make the clearance appear legitimate. Another clerk had seen him return to it after the near collision.

The object went into Order custody, while railway management dismissed the assistant and the Imperial Police charged him over the falsified record and the injuries caused by the unauthorized signal change.

Neumann closed the file. ”Some of you got the answer. Others guessed and got lucky, so learn the fucking difference.”

Severin left his correction uncrossed.

❈ ❈ ❈

At supper, the field book occupied more of Severin’s table than his food did.

He had found the section Neumann assigned for the next morning. It sent him to another section, then an amendment that referred him back to a paragraph he had already read twice.

Martin had abandoned his own copy beside an empty bowl.

”Hale, you planning to eat that?”

Severin moved his bread away from him. ”Piss off. I’m busy.”

”Worth asking.” Martin got up and left.

Severin tried the paragraph again until a clerk at the next table said something in Vhaldrik.

Severin looked over. ”What?”

The man repeated himself, saw the answer on Severin’s face and switched to Aethermerian.

”You’re reading it from the front.”

”I’m reading the bit he told us to read.”

”That’s the problem. You’re chasing every reference instead of finding the one you actually need.”

The clerk was somewhere in his forties. His sleeves were rolled above the wrists, and ink stained one finger. He shifted his tray over and pointed at the index.

”Start with the problem. What are you trying to find?”

Severin showed him the assignment.

The clerk ran a finger down the index and stopped on a section number. ”Go there first. Read the rule. If it sends you somewhere else, figure out what for before you follow it.”

”Is that how these are meant to work?”

”Pretty much.”

”You a clerk or a fucking librarian?”

The man smiled. ”Clerk now. Schoolteacher before that.”

He showed Severin how to strip the first long sentence down to the instruction hidden inside it, then gathered his tray.

”That’s enough. Do the next one yourself.”

Severin watched him leave.

He turned back to the index and found the next section before the page had time to annoy him.