Chapter 3: The Vow of the Purple Robe

Rain pattered against the stone steps. Emre stood under the copyist’s portico, the Chronicle tucked against his chest, half-hidden by the hem of his coat. He looked down at the line of water dripping from the eaves, drop by drop, like someone counting with a needle on stone. His mind drifted to his father’s words: “I would rather die than sign it.” His fingers brushed the leather cover of their own accord, tracing the grain. The cold seeped from his palm straight into his bones.

A thin layer of mist clung to the shadows of the portico. Fine moss had sprouted in the cracks of the stone, gleaming with a wet, damp shine in the gloom. He stood there for a moment. The hem of his coat was already a ring of dark, damp stains where splashing rain had soaked it, clinging to his ankles with a chilling touch.

He looked up. The window in Melhem’s room was still lit, the yellow light slivered and narrow, like a squinting eye.

He pushed the door open. The copyist’s room smelled of dry old paper and ink. The fire had burned down to nearly nothing; a few dull red coals clung to life in the ash. Melhem sat behind the long table, a scroll of parchment spread out before her. She didn’t look up when the door creaked. She simply set her pen on the edge of the inkwell. The tip hovered above the rim, and a single drop of ink fell back into the well, silent and smooth.

Emre walked over and placed the Chronicle on the corner of the table. His fingers rested on the cover for a second before he spoke. “I need you to help me compare something.”

Melhem raised her eyes. Her gaze fell on the book, lingering for a moment before she said, “I thought you would go to her. Your father came to me once. He had this very book with him.”

Emre’s heart skipped a beat. “What did he want from you?”

“He asked me to destroy the book.” Melhem slowly rolled up the parchment, her thumb stroking the edge of the roll. “I refused.”

Emre pressed his hand against the Chronicle’s cover. “I went to the Municipal Archives today. I cross-referenced the surviving genealogical copies. The dates match. But there are ink smudges on the margins of the copy—it looks like someone deliberately scrubbed it, erasing a few lines. I need to know if someone tampered with the records before I did.”

Melhem didn’t answer right away. She got up and poured herself a cup of coffee by the hearth, then handed it to him. The coffee was cold, the chill of the cup’s wall seeping out. A fine crack ran along the rim, smoothed by years of use, looking like a pale, old scar.

“You are cleverer than she is,” she said. “At least you know to ask first.”

Emre took the cup, his palm pressed against the side, the cold climbing up through the gaps in his fingers. “Do you know who made those smudges?”

Melhem didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “That book holds something that shouldn’t exist. That is why your father died.”

Emre’s grip on the cup tightened until his knuckles turned white. “The List. I saw the words he scratched out, then rewrote them underneath: ‘This List concerns the Seven Families, all innocent. If delivered, the entire household perishes. I would rather die than sign it.’”

Melhem looked at him, a hint of fatigue in her eyes that was hard to catch—like the dull red glow of a wick at the very end of its life. “You knew that?”

“I know.”

“Then why are you still walking around with it?” Melhem’s voice dropped, almost swallowed by the dying embers of the fire. “Do you realize that if this book falls into her hands, the List means the end of every soul in those seven households.”

Emre was silent for a moment. His gaze fell on the yellow lamp outside the window. “Zeynep promised me patronage and a title. She said she could clear my father’s name.”

Melhem let out a short, cold laugh, sharp as metal clanging. “She isn’t offering you a title, she’s offering you legitimacy. She wants to make those seven families traitors, and your father the man who handed over the List. She doesn’t need the truth. She just needs a name to stamp on it.”

Emre stood there, the cold coffee in his hand, the chill soaking into his palm. He remembered Zeynep’s eyes when she spoke—gentle, yet weighted, like a hand pressing down on a page. It wasn’t a heavy hand, but it made it impossible to turn the page.

“Your father came to me later, too,” Melhem said. “He asked if I could destroy the List for him.”

Emre looked up. “He didn’t destroy it?”

“He couldn’t bear to.” Melhem said. “He was afraid that if he destroyed the book, he would never be able to prove his own innocence. He would rather live with the stain of guilt than let the truth disappear.”

Emre looked down at the dark brown book. The corners of the cover were worn shiny, revealing a paler layer of leather underneath. His father’s words finally had a new meaning—“I would rather die than sign it.” It wasn’t about fear of the signature implicating himself, but fear that his signature would implicate the Seven Families.

“What else do you know?” he asked.

Melhem didn’t answer immediately. She just spread out that scroll of parchment and pointed to a line of very faint writing on the edge, her fingertip skimming the surface gently, as if touching something fragile. “There was a line in a letter your father wrote me, years ago. I still remember it today. He said that on the last page of the Chronicle, there was a line of scratched-out words. When they were rewritten, the handwriting was his. He told me to look closely and said, ‘That is not what I wrote.’”

Emre shuddered. “It wasn’t written by my father?”

“The scratched-out words were his handwriting.” Melhem said. “The rewritten line was also in his hand. But he said he never wrote that line.”

Emre’s fingertips felt cold. He remembered that line he had seen—“I would rather die than sign it”—it was his father’s handwriting, but his father said it wasn’t him?

“Can you tell the difference?” he asked.

“I have been a copyist for thirty years.” Melhem said. “You can mimic handwriting, but you can’t fake the depth of the ink, the force of the downstroke, or the habit of the lift. Your father’s line was written smoother than usual, as if someone was imitating his style.”

Emre was silent for a long time. The last piece of coal in the fire caved in, sending up a small wisp of ash that drifted slowly down in the lamplight.

A bell rang in the distance, muffled, as if heard through water. He remembered the bell when morning prayers ended, but this time it seemed to be ringing backwards.

“If I hand over the book,” he said, “what happens?”

Melhem looked at him, her gaze calm but deep, like still water. “If you hand it over, I will burn the List of Refugees. I will let those seven families fend for themselves.”

Emre was stunned. “You—”

“I have the List in my hands.” Melhem said. “I have kept it for twenty years. Your father sent it to me when he was alive, saying that if something ever happened to him, I should keep it safe for him. He said that as long as the List existed, those seven families had a chance. Without it, they are rootless people.”

Emre’s fingers, wrapped around the cup, turned white, the knuckles standing out like a row of small bones. “You want to burn it?”

“If you hand over that book, keeping the List is useless.” Melhem said. “The book is the blade, the List is just the sheath. Once the blade is out of the sheath, it doesn’t matter if the sheath is burned or not.”

Emre stood at the table. The cold coffee was thoroughly lukewarm now, the chill from the cup seeming to seep into his very bones. He thought of his father’s words, “Do not deliver it to anyone,” and Zeynep’s promise of cleared names and titles.

His father bought the safety of those seven families with his life. And the book in Emre’s hands was the blade that killed them.

Melhem saw his hesitation and her voice softened, flickering like a candle flame. “Your father would rather die than sign it. If you sign it today, you are just the one burying those seven families.”

Emre looked up at her. The lamplight cast uneven shadows on her face. Her eyes were like two dry wells, yet there was still a glimmer of water in them.

Melhem did not avoid his gaze. “I won’t stop you. If you want to take it to her, that is your choice. But before the bell rings tomorrow morning, give me an answer. If you truly want to hand it over, I will burn the List. If you decide not to, leave the book with me here, and I will destroy it.”

Emre was silent for a long time. Finally, he pulled the Chronicle back into his coat and stood up. “I need a night to think.”

Melhem didn’t get up to see him out. She just said, “Before the bell rings tomorrow morning, give me an answer.”

Emre pushed the door open and stepped out into the night rain. The streets were drenched. The stone steps were washed until they gleamed, and the streetlight shattered into patches in the puddles. He stood under the eaves, the Chronicle pressed against his chest, cold like a silent bone.

The rain kept falling.

He heard the door behind him close softly. The click of the latch was sharp and clear in the rain. He looked down at his Shadow, stretched and swaying in the streetlight, like another living thing.

He thought of his father’s words, of Melhem’s words, and of Zeynep’s gentle, heavy eyes.

He stood there, not moving.

Then he turned and walked down the wet stone steps toward the west of the city. The rain poured into the collar of his cloak, and he didn’t care.

He needed to verify one thing.

Melhem had mentioned that the Chronicle contained something that shouldn’t exist. He didn’t believe in riddles, but he believed in paper. The names of the seven families could be burned, but the ink on the page wouldn’t lie.

At the end of an alley in the west district, there was an old parchment shop, where the waste scraps of generations of copyists were stored. Melhem had never cleaned it out. Emre had delivered manuscripts for her before; he knew one of the door bars was loose.

He slipped inside. Using the faint light from the street, he rummaged through the moldy rolls of paper. His fingers brushed the rough skin until they touched a rolled scrap of a Chronicle with a pressed flower pattern on the back. That was Melhem’s handwriting, but the date was twenty years older than the genealogy in the book.

He held it up to the light and examined it closely. The depth of the ink in two places, the flow of the brush, were exactly the same, but the dates didn’t match. The names on this scrap were different from those in the book.

His heartbeat slowed.

So that was it.

The names of the seven families in the book had been added later. Someone had woven those names into the Chronicle using the same handwriting, forging a “genealogy.”

It wasn’t Zeynep who forged it. It was the person who gave her that book. Zeynep had been handed a fake. And the one in Emre’s arms was the real one—real enough to condemn those seven families forever.

He held the scrap, standing in the rain, and suddenly felt like laughing.

His father would rather die than sign it. Because a signature is proof. And this book itself is the evidence. He doesn’t need to sign it. The book already accuses everything.

Melhem was right. This thing shouldn’t exist.

The sky was turning pale at the horizon. The bell was about to ring.

Emre went back to Melhem’s door and knocked. The door opened. Melhem saw the scrap in his arms and her expression shifted slightly.

“You’ve decided?”

He handed her the scrap. “Don’t burn the List. I’m keeping this.”

Melhem stared at him for a long time, then nodded. “So, how do you plan to answer Zeynep?”

Emre looked up at the brightening sky. “I’ll tell her—the book is real. But those seven families might not be innocent.”

The bell crashed down.