Richard sprinkled a circle of salt on the table and placed the Carthage Lead Scroll in its center.
Last time, he had forced the curse out, collected the little clean Aether remaining inside, and stuffed the curse back in unchanged to keep as a sample.
He took out the Viking Trade Bead as well.
It was one of the things he had obtained in Fire-Smother Village on his last mission with Catherine and McPhee.
Of all the empty-shell Curios, this bead was the easiest to carry, so he had kept it on him. Now it was just right for an experiment.
He placed the bead along the outer edge of the salt circle, a palm's width from the Carthage Lead Scroll.
He pressed [Seal-Opening] Aether into the lead scroll. The curse was soon squeezed out of the lead's surface and began to disperse the moment it emerged.
Richard breathed a mouthful of vacuum toward it and stitched the edges shut.
Three lines of text lit up in the stagnant water, one after another:
Bind his horses' hooves, bind his charioteer's eyes, bind his hands so they cannot hold the reins.
Richard's gaze stopped on the third line. Whoever had inscribed the curse had misspelled the Latin s (hands) as s, and had even written the final s backward. He raised an eyebrow at the misspelling. That misspelled s would be where he made tonight's cut.
The curse could hang suspended in the stagnant water thanks to the mouthful of vacuum Richard had just breathed out.
When he pressed [Seal-Opening] Aether into the Carthage Lead Scroll, the curse was soon squeezed out of the lead's surface, and it began to disperse as soon as it left the lead.
Before it could disperse, he breathed out a mouthful of vacuum and stitched