The only surviving memory Idris had from the immediate aftermath of discovering that he was not a healer was of the entrance hall of the house. He remembered waking up from his faint, seeing the light on the tiles coming through the windows, hearing his uncle giving orders above him to healers that were rushing to and fro. Their shoes squeaked on the freshly washed floor as they grabbed towels and pitchers of water. Everything smelled of wild limes. His uncle’s shawl, wrapped right around Idris’s shivering arms, was soft and warm.

The tiles did not smell like limes, this time, and the air was still and silent. The candles in the sconces were dark. The room seemed… smaller.

Lila rubbed his forearm soothingly, waiting for his next move.

“Where do we start?” she whispered.

He turned his head to the right, to the room which was his bedroom. The door was open.

“My mother hated when I left the door open,” he said. “It aired the room so nicely, though.”

He unhooked his arm from Lila and wandered over to the doorway, peered in. The bed was made, with his spring blanket draped invitingly over the sheets, and the desk had the texts he had been studying tucked tidily into a pile in the corner.

“This is where you used to sleep?” said Lila. He nodded, gestured to the window.

“See the clematis?”

“I see it.”

“It is toxic. But… but it has its uses.” Idris entered the room, cracked the window slightly. “You can use it for headaches. The seeds, they can soothe burns.”

He took in the view. There, the gardens. Beyond that, the wall. He could see into the village from there.

“We should plant some,” Lila said. “We can take seeds home. I wonder if the Head Gardener could cultivate black ones for you?”

Idris smiled softly, shook his head. “The things I left here should stay here, Lila.”

Slowly, he left the window, walked back out to the hall and tried to get his bearings.

“My father’s study should be the first place we look,” he said, when Lila caught up. “Uncle Haylan may have had some papers but I am sure my father kept everything to do with the estate, his work and our belongings. Failing that, there is a small library, and my mother’s workroom.”

“What specifically are we looking for, sir?” said Lila.

“Anything that mentions me by name, or anything which indicates a visitor who would not give a full name or dwelling. If The Remaker lives near here, this is the only place he could get medical aid.”

“Then, I will start in your uncle’s room, if you will point the way.”

Uncle Haylan’s suite sat on the first floor, above Idris’s old room. They tried several keys before they found the correct one, and Lila passed him the ring so he could unlock his father’s study. Idris crossed the tile, past the private parlour and the library, to the back of the house where his parents’ suite covered the whole rear of the floor. The carved iron door still invoked a chill in his spine. As a child, an invitation to the Master Suite meant he was in trouble.

The morning thistles on the handles were hard on Idris’s palms as he gripped and pushed. Beyond, the room was dark. The attendants had draped the furniture with heavy cloths to protect it, in case the Eremonts ever returned to Temple Hill, giving the impression that the room was inhabited by several funerial shrouds. He remembered comfortable, golden-wood chairs and tables, handsome rugs, processional robes hanging on mannequins, but none of those things were recognisable. The tall windows that overlooked The Underwood had their embroidered curtains drawn closed.

Idris moved past the dust sheets, through to the back corner of the room where the desk and a few cubby holes sat. Once he had gathered up the sheet, he began flicking through the scrolls and papers. Nothing but requisition orders unsent, receipts unsigned.

Sucking his cheeks, he sighed and tried to focus himself. The will he had to write was only part of the problem. The second piece of information that eluded him was whether The Remaker even existed. Idris knew his family kept logbooks of treatments rendered and payments, so that if the patient ever returned they could check on their previous history with ease; the issue was how to determine where this man might be.

The door to his father’s study was beside the desk. Idris found the correct key, unlocked the door and entered.

Once, he had been taken into the study. All he remembered about it were the shelves and shelves of triangular cubbies. The smell of old, untreated parchment made him sneeze as soon as the door opened, and he spent a minute drying his eyes before he ventured in. It was less a study and more a repository for anything and everything his father had to keep on paper. Luckily, there were labels on the cubbies.

Idris walked the rows, checking the labels. Most of the papers were treatises on certain plants or seeds, reference diagrams of diseases and broken bones, books on aria stances and conducting the healer songs. Willard would have enjoyed rifling through the shelves, finding new flowers to make teas and mashes from; Idris wished he could take the collected knowledge off the parchment and stuff it into a box for the hedge witch to savour.

Eventually, he came across a stack of square shelves which held a variety of shabby chests. Idris leant his cane against the wall, pulled one out; it was heavy and puffed a cloud of dust out when he set it on the floor.

Inside were thirty blue-covered journals.

Idris took the first, opened it to the middle.

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‘… lesions along the inner thigh…’

Treatment records.

Idris put the first back, pulled another at random, checked the date printed on the first page. It looked like his father had kept them routinely, methodically, for several years, likely even before he had become an Eremont.

But there must have been hundreds in the chests on the shelves.

“Black bells,” Idris whispered, staring at the task before him.

He replaced the chest, took the one from the bottom shelf and looked in the final journal, scanning for his own name. Eventually, he found an entry, dated some weeks before his seventh birthday, where he was mentioned.

‘Rash on both hands. Raised red lumps, pinprick sized. Patient (Idris Eremont) asked for description of activities in hour leading up to discovery of rash. I.E. claimed to have been foraging in the gardens. Described patch of red flowers, likely burning wort. Morning thistle paste applied. Patient was encouraged to feel for the aria to assist himself (adept) but I.E. claimed hands were too swollen and itchy to concentrate.’

Idris set his jaw, placed the journal back. He assumed most of the entries about himself were the same, in some form.

If The Remaker had visited Temple Hill, it would have been a relatively private meeting, Idris was certain of that. Maybe such entries did not exist in the study. Still, he found himself looking to the very top of the shelves, a place he would need a ladder to reach.

He could not risk falling, so he stacked a few chests on the floor in a little staircase and climbed those, and he wedged his prosthetic foot inside one of the shelf cubbies to his right as he wriggled the top chest out of its home. It was dustier than the rest, and he coughed and sneezed as the particles sprinkled over his face. Eventually, though, he had his prize, and he carried it out of the cramped study, back into the main parlour.

As soon as he flipped the lid, he knew he had found something secret.

These journals were less well-read – he could tell that by the lack of creasing on the spines – and even the first entry was strange to Idris.

‘Lord Eremont requested private consultation. Administered sleeping nettle. Performed blood extraction. Administered angel’s salve.’

“Angel’s salve?” Idris whispered to himself. “Angel’s salve is for… for infections. Grandfather had an infection?”

There were several entries for Lord Eremont, all with similar descriptions. He recalled his grandfather as a strong, terse man, not as a frail invalid with a recurring, serious illness. But every entry was short and precise in this way, never naming the patient’s ailment, only describing the treatment, so that nothing could be discerned unless a trained healer read them.

Then, some pages in, Idris felt his breath catch in his throat.

‘Patient L.A.E. Administered moon’s tea.’

Moon’s tea was for pregnant women.

Why would his father write an entry about treating his own wife? Why would he write her name as Lady Astridia Eremont, instead of Astrid? Surely the pregnancy was not secret, that made no sense.

Then, Idris noticed that there were ridges of paper that seemed to indicate torn out pages.

He sat silent, on the floor of his parents’ private parlour, fingers touching the torn edges. At first, he wondered if maybe the pregnancy was kept secret to stop Lord Eremont finding out. That would be understandable, if there had been no marriage, yet. But his father did not seem the type to be secretly wooing ladies from more prominent families than his own – Obrin Eremont was always cautious, careful, well-spoken and well-behaved – and besides, what did it matter if they married anyway? Idris did not remember being kept away from other families; he knew he had been loved, in his parents’ own, quiet way.

The only other alternative made his head spin.

He took a long, steadying breath, told himself that it did not matter, but the question kept running through his brain.

What if Obrin was not his father?

Idris had guessed it, many times – dreaded it, even. But there, in his hand, there was a thin line of proof. Why else would the preceding pages be removed? If his parents were not yet married, it would make sense for Obrin’s journal to call her by her full, titled name when he treated her. It would make sense why he had to write it down in his secret medical journal.

What if…?

There were so many terrible conclusions to jump to that Idris felt exhausted. He imagined his poor mother, scared and sobbing, as his father (the man who had pretended to be his father) had comforted her and given her the tea and told her everything would be all right. He wondered what she must have been thinking. Maybe she asked Obrin to help her get rid of the pregnancy. Maybe she asked him to marry her to save her pride. Maybe Obrin stood before Lord Eremont and asked for Astridia’s hand in marriage, knowing full well that if Eremont refused, Astridia’s life was ruined.

“Sir Idris?”

Idris tore himself from his spiralling terror, turned to the door. Lila was there, looking in.

“I found some papers,” she said. Then, “You are as white as a milk worm, sir. Is everything…?”

“I… yes,” said Idris, rousing himself. “Yes. I am probably having a reaction to the dust. What did you find?”

“Some notes with your date of birth and general well-being. Your mother’s, too. It seems your uncle wrote a lot about you, about your milestones and achievements. There are folders full.”

“Choose a chest from the study,” he said, getting up. “Keep them in one of those. You can tip one out, if you wish.”

“I am going to move to the library,” she said, “but…” She paused, frowned. “There is a locked box in your uncle’s room. It has your name on it. Well, not your name, but…”

Idris clutched the journal, nodded. “I will get it open. Thank you, Lila.”

“Nothing in here, sir?”

“Nothing of any importance.”

“The Remaker?”

“Not yet. But I fear that even if we had a week, we would not have time to go through all of my father’s notes.” His voice caught oddly when he said ‘my father’s’, as if it was a bad omen. “I have not even started with my mother’s.”

“It… it is awful sad in this place, Sir Idris,” said Lila quietly. “All dark and closed up like this. Do you think your mother and father will ever come back?”

“No,” he said. “If they were going to come back, they would have already.”

“Then what will happen to this house?”

“Another healer family will take it over. The Meers, maybe.” He shrugged. “It hardly matters. It has been an empty shell for years.”

“I wish it could just be yours.”

“It cannot be. Even if it could be, I am not sure I would want it. I will go and open that box, Lila. If you need me…”

“Of course, sir.”

He left the Master Suite, journal pressed to his chest, and walked quickly to his uncle’s rooms. Lila had left them tidy enough. They were not dust-sheeted; like his own room, they were made up tidily as if the day Uncle Haylan left he had assumed he was returning.

Idris stood, paralysed, in the doorway. Everything was so familiar.

“Be brave,” he told himself, and he stepped through. He passed the armchair where he and his uncle used to sit to read, and the pipe stand where Haylan used to lay his worst habit at night, and he looked right at something he had never seen before.

It was a simple wooden box, with a keyhole on the front, varnished and carved with a single inscription.

Master the Third

Idris placed the journal softly on the desk beside the box, and he sat in Uncle Haylan’s tall chair, and he gazed at the wooden lid, feeling numb and small.

“I am sorry, Uncle,” he whispered, took the box in both hands and slammed it against the edge of the desk.

The first time, it did not open, but that was fine. Idris internalised the vibration, the pure simplicity of smashing something. It did not feel good, and it did not solve his fear, but there was release, like draining a cyst. With a small grunt, he bashed it again, and a third time, and a fourth, until at last, with a scream that burned his throat like a spell, the top of the box burst open and the contents spilled out onto the desk top.

Gasping, teary, Idris reached out and picked up the first piece of paper.

Dear nephew, it began.