"The agarwood gave off its perfume, and the vine oil clouded over, invaded by the ghosts of other lives, from the time when it was just a dry seed under heaps of limestone. The knife, the same knife that I had gripped in my hands without feeling its hidden power, that had sent Dubois to Marseille, sparked by the unseen veins that still bound it to Chelyabinsk, had begun to do its work."