Chapter 4 The Mayor's Empty Chair

Mayor Alric Halthorne was not in his office.

He hadn't been seen in three days except once, very early in the morning, stepping out of a black carriage near the edge of Crowswell Hill, speaking briefly to someone no one could identify, and stepping back inside just as the town's milkman turned the corner.

He hadn't left the manor since.

That was unusual.

Even the pigeons noticed.

At the town hall, the great hall's long table remained set for a meeting that had not occurred. A half full carafe of elderberry cordial sat sweating in its glass, untouched. The wooden chair at the far end the Mayor's was conspicuously vacant, a folded copy of the Denbridge Gazette draped across its seat, ink smudged from the night dew.

Councilman Braye, the oldest member of the town council and the only one who still wore ceremonial cuffs to every meeting, tapped his fingers against the polished wood.

"Third postponement," he muttered. "The townsfolk will start whispering about curses again."

"They already are," said Miss Nettle, who had been taking notes no one asked for. "Mrs. Kemple claims her hens are laying double yolked eggs again."

"Last time that happened, the blacksmith eloped with the baker's cousin," Braye said.

"That was a blessing, not a curse."

"I never said curses were all bad."

At the other end of the hall, Julian Blight sat perched on the windowsill, watching the square with unsettling stillness. His coat was perfectly buttoned, his boots too clean for cobblestone, and he hadn't said a word since arriving.

Nettle glanced at him. "You've been to the manor recently, haven't you?"

Julian didn't look up. "I delivered a ledger two nights ago. The mayor didn't receive it personally."

"Then who did?"

"A man I didn't know. Wore gloves indoors. Smelled like ink and wood smoke."

Braye grunted. "That's too poetic for a government clerk."

"Maybe not," Julian said. "He called me by my full name before I introduced myself."

Nettle blinked. "You told him your name."

"No. I didn't."

That same evening, the manor lights flickered briefly three short flashes, like a signal but no one in town claimed to have seen it. No carriages came or went. No deliveries were made.

But at sunrise, the baker's girl saw footprints in the frost leading up to the old mill road, and there was a mark on the mayor's gate. Not graffiti. Not quite a letter either.

Just a single red thread, tied to the iron hinge and drifting in the breeze.

The rumors began gently, like they always did.

A secret illness. A sudden inheritance. A scandal from the coast. A visiting duchess. A curse, naturally.

But none of them knew that the mayor had been meeting in secret long before his absence began and that someone else knew it too.

Miriam first heard about it from Lena, who heard it from a fishmonger's niece who overheard it from her cousin who worked near the hill.

"She said he's been having meetings," Lena said, pouring tea into their chipped porcelain mugs. "At night. With people who don't take the front road in."

"Could be a trade negotiation," Miriam said, distracted. The letter Olivia had handed her that morning sat folded beside her, unopened.

Lena raised a brow. "Since when does Denbridge negotiate with anyone? Our idea of diplomacy is waving from the ferry."

Miriam traced the edge of the letter's seal with her thumb. Black wax. A deep, looping "M" pressed into it.

Lena noticed. "Still haven't opened it?"

"I don't like the feeling of it."

"Well, it clearly likes you." Lena sipped. "You can always throw it into the sea. Let the waves worry about it."

"Or I could read it and know the truth."

"But what's the fun in that?"

They sat in silence for a moment. Then Lena said, "You're going to the gallery tonight, aren't you?"

"I might."

"Don't pretend it's about the art. Elias is reading there again."

Miriam said nothing.

"Every time he looks at you," Lena added with a smirk, "he squints like he's trying to see your real name."

That night, at the old converted gallery once a cooper's shop, now painted in shades of twilight and candle waxElias read a passage from a half finished novel. The crowd listened politely. Some took notes. Others just admired his voice.

Miriam stood at the back.

She hadn't opened the letter yet. It sat in her coat pocket, like something with weight.

When Elias looked up briefly, his gaze met hers across the room. It wasn't intense. It wasn't cinematic.

But it lingered.

And it made her forget, for one brief moment, that something strange was stirring in Denbridge. Something tied to black wax, to secret meetings, and to the man who hadn't sat in his chair in over a week.