Page 25

Placing the rations beside him, he settled back on the pallet, settling into the discomfort he’d become familiar with.

He hadn’t eaten a meal since Neron N13 but wasn’t starving.

The nerves and fever of being so close to Élisa were enough to whip away all appetite.

Sleeping was also out of the question.

But the toll of the last few days was beginning to wear on him, and it was harder now to stay awake.

Yet he refused to give in to weariness and exhaustion. Sleep could come later after discovering where Élisa was taking him.

Once, while hunting down a target in Trevino in Galicia, where artists and maestros abounded, Riv chanced upon a book restorer.

The man, an Iccythrian master of the pages, showed him how to bring his small, rare leather-bound poetry volume back to life from its tattered, worn state.

The Rider spent many happy hours learning to separate the cover from the text block. He’d wielded a book-repair knife to remove old glue and debris found on the end paper.

He’d soaked the sheets in hot water and used a micro spatula to help separate them.

He’d then taught himself to touch up the leather-bound cover using an archival pen and sheets of thin gold to repair the gilt embossing.

He’d lovingly treated the tears on the folio with thin Japanese tissue and an archival rice-starch paste. Before gluing together the individual leaves, mull, hinges, and the decorative end sheet, back together.

He’d added antique end leaves and colored in the edges of his revitalized treasure. Adding another few hundred years of life to the words within.

Now, Riv sat up on the pallet and pulled the small brown and gold leather book out of his back pocket.

Opening the sweet and pungent-smelling pages, he lost himself in an epic poem by an old Earth poet.

‘THE DAY is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of night

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist

And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me

That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing

That is not akin to pain

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.’

He forgot all about time and his surroundings, losing himself in expressions of semi-rhythmic long-suffering.

‘What are you doing?’

The words crashed into his prose-driven reverie.