Chapter 31
LYRA
Master Deylan placed three histories of the same massacre on our table and told us one of them was lying. Dax looked down at the stack. “Only one?”
Across from him, Emrin closed her eyes. “Please don’t encourage him.”
“I’m asking an academic question.”
“You haven’t asked an academic question in your life.”
“That’s hurtful.”
I pulled the first document toward me before their argument could become the loudest thing in the Hall of Theory.
Around us, the room had settled into the usual scrape of quills and low conversation.
Nearly sixty candidates occupied the tiered rows, bent over bundles of copied records Deylan had distributed at the beginning of class.
Above us, morning light filtered through tall windows of cloudy glass, catching on the suspended brass rings that mapped the five elemental affinities across the domed ceiling.
Deylan stood at the front with his hands clasped behind his back.
“A preserved record is not a truthful one,” he said.
“It is merely a record someone considered worth preserving.”
My fingers stopped on the page. Dax noticed.
Emrin did too. Neither said anything. Deylan turned toward the board.
Three dates were already written there. The Battle of Caerith Ford.
The name meant little to me beyond a battle I had probably been expected to memorize and had promptly forgotten.
A border conflict between Tharellan and Cindralith nearly two centuries ago.
Three days of fighting. Hundreds dead. Both realms had apparently spent the following hundred and eighty years arguing about who started it.
Deylan drew a line through the first date.
“Royal accounts place the first attack here. Tharellan military records place it two days earlier. A surviving Sanctum correspondence places it somewhere between the two.”
A candidate near the front raised his hand. “So which is correct?”
“If I knew, this exercise would be considerably less useful.”
A few people laughed. Deylan didn’t.
“The purpose of historical study is not to choose whichever version sounds most convincing. You examine who wrote it. When. For whom. What they stood to gain from the account being believed.” He picked up one of the copied records. “And you examine what has been changed.”
My attention sharpened. Deylan’s gaze moved across the room.
“Original enchanted documents retain magical provenance.”
Beside me, Emrin’s quill paused.
“Not indefinitely,” Deylan continued. “And not always clearly. Ink fades. Spell work deteriorates. Records are copied. Wards are replaced. But magic leaves evidence of its use.”
The nameless record appeared behind my eyes. Parchment intact. Words gone. Female. Seventeen at admission. Elyndor. Light. And those six words hidden behind the drawer. The girl is not to be named.
“What kind of evidence?” I asked.
Deylan looked up. Of course he did. Half the room seemed to follow.
“Depends on the alteration.”
“If part of a record was erased.”
Emrin shifted beside me. Dax’s quill stopped scratching. Deylan studied me long enough to make me regret speaking.
“Ordinary erasure?”
“Magical.”
That earned more attention. I could feel it without looking. Deylan set the document down.
“A competent alteration leaves very little visible evidence. An exceptional one may leave none.”
“Then how would you know?”
“Because removing magic requires magic.” He picked up the chalk.
“Every affinity interacts with physical material differently. Fire destroys. Earth alters structure. Water can separate compounds within inks and dyes. Light is particularly effective at removing enchantments without damaging the vessel carrying them.”
My stomach tightened.
“And Shadow?” The question came from somewhere behind me.
Deylan didn’t hesitate. “Shadow is particularly effective at concealing that anything was removed at all.”
My Shadow rune warmed beneath my clothes. I kept my hands flat on the table. Deylan drew several short marks beneath the dates.
“An alteration can sometimes be traced through residue. Sometimes through inconsistencies in the enchantment surrounding it. More often, we prove alteration by what remains.” He tapped the board. “A missing name is evidence.”
My pulse kicked.
“A missing date is evidence. A genealogy that jumps a generation. A battle report naming every officer except the one who gave an order. You are too accustomed to reading what someone has put in front of you.” His gaze swept the rows. “Learn to read what they did not.”
Silence held for a moment. Then Deylan nodded toward our tables.
“You have forty minutes.”
Dax waited until Deylan had moved away before leaning toward me. “So.”
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to ask why you suddenly have a scholarly fascination with magically erased records.”
Emrin gave him a warning look. Dax caught it. His eyes moved between us. I watched the exact moment curiosity replaced amusement.
“Interesting.”
“Read your documents.”
He leaned back. “I am reading the people at my table.”
“That isn’t the assignment.”
“I’m expanding the curriculum.”
Emrin shoved the second account toward him. “Expand this.”
Dax sighed dramatically and took it. I lowered my eyes to my own record.
The account had been written by a Cindralith commander three weeks after Caerith Ford.
I forced myself through troop numbers, supply failures and several paragraphs dedicated to explaining why setting half a valley on fire had been strategically necessary.
Yesterday, I might have skimmed it. Today, I noticed every omission.
Two officers identified by rank but not name.
A village described only as the eastern settlement.
An entire section where the handwriting changed. I circled it. Emrin glanced over.
“What?”
“The script.”
She leaned closer. Dax did too.
“The last three paragraphs are narrower.”
Emrin compared the pages. “And the ink is different.”
Dax held the parchment toward the window. “The copyist could have changed.”
“Except the record says it was transcribed by one person,” I said.
Dax looked at me. Then at the parchment. “Huh.”
I stared at the two sections. What remained.
What didn’t. Someone had wanted that woman in the Sanctum records.
Just not her name. Why? If she were my mother, why erase her?
And why preserve enough that another person could still find her?
My quill had stopped moving. Emrin nudged my knee beneath the table.
I looked at her. She didn’t ask. She simply tapped the next paragraph.
Later. I nodded. Dax watched the exchange.
For once, he kept his mouth shut. We found four inconsistencies before Deylan called time.
Apparently that was good. Apparently the correct answer was that all three accounts were lying. Dax looked personally betrayed.
“You said one.”
“I said one of them was lying.”
“That implies the others aren’t.”
“It implies nothing of the sort.”
“That feels dishonest.”
Deylan began collecting the records. “Then you’ve learned something about unreliable narrators.”
A laugh moved through the room. Dax stared after him.
“I hate this class.”
We were gathering our books when Deylan stopped beside our table. His attention landed on the circles covering my copy.
“You found the transcription change.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“The handwriting.”
“Anything else?”
I hesitated. “The writer names everyone until that section. Then he starts using titles.”
Deylan nodded. “Better.” He took the page. “Names are dangerous things in historical records, Alerain. Remember that.”
Then he walked away. I stared after him. Dax slowly turned toward me.
“That was ominous.”
“Everything he says is ominous.”
“True.”
Emrin shoved her notes into her bag. “Come on.”
We joined the flood of candidates spilling into the corridor.
The Sanctum was louder here than it had any right to be after yesterday.
That bothered me. Candidates crowded the passage beneath the arched windows, arguing over the assignment and whatever training waited for them next.
Two Pyra candidates were taking bets on whether their instructor would notice if they skipped afternoon drills.
A bell sounded somewhere above us. Another answered from the eastern tower.
The Sanctum continued. As though there weren’t rooms beneath our feet that descended farther than the mountain should allow.
As though thousands of names didn’t whisper in the dark.
As though one of them hadn’t been erased.
Dax peeled away toward Verdant Hallows after extracting a promise from Emrin that she would save him a seat at lunch.
Emrin waited until he disappeared. Then she turned to me.
“Are you going to tell him?”
“About the Shadow?”
“And everything else.”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s my brother, Lyra. You’re one of my best friends, and I am so grateful to have been trusted with your secrets, but I can’t lie to him.”
I knew she couldn’t. Lying wasn’t in her nature. She adjusted the strap of her bag.
“You can trust him too.”
“I just don’t know how many times I can do that.”
“Tell people?”
“Wait for them to decide whether I’m still me.”
Emrin slowed. Before she could answer, someone struck my shoulder hard enough to knock the books against my chest. I caught them before they fell.
“Watch where you’re—”
The words died. Neseryn had stopped three paces away.
She looked back at me. No apology. Of course.
Her dark hair was pulled away from her face today, exposing the sharp line of her cheekbones and those strange violet-rimmed eyes that had become considerably harder to dismiss after the Crucible.
Emrin moved to my side. Neseryn noticed.
Her gaze dropped briefly to the bandage around Emrin’s hand. Then returned to me.
“Alerain.”
“Neseryn.”