2 Mercy #3
Discomfited, she thrust her hands in her pockets. “What brings an Inquisitor to the Academiae?”
“I conducted today’s service.” He walked up the chancel and closed the volume of the Codices on the pulpit. “It’s customary for us to impart wisdom to the graduates.”
She could only imagine what sort of wisdom he’d been imparting.
Cassandane’s exhausted face came to mind.
Strain had made a new woman of the Head Tetrarch after months of protests that she wasn’t fit to lead the country on account of her sex.
An easily reinforced opinion when the dominant religion’s greatest villain was female and canonically had a penchant for red robes.
Her hands fisted. “Interesting. Good day, Inquisitor—”
“Lady Truth often gets short shrift compared to Lady Wisdom.” Silvus gestured at the altar, singling out a goddess with tear tracks permanently etched on her face.
Her mouth widened in a scream at her twin brother, Lord Deceit, who was frozen in the act of reaching for her—whether to hurt or aid, Sarai couldn’t say.
“Wisdom provides the more interesting gifts. Creativity. Intelligence. Truth has only ever been, well, a sword without hilt. Cuts the wielder and the victim.”
This was no longer about the Elsar. “Truth is my only task.”
“And yet, it is Wisdom and not Truth who is the patron goddess of Petitors.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re here to impart the Order’s wisdom to the graduates not to me.”
“You could’ve been a graduate had the Magus Supreme spared you a thought that night five years ago.
” Gray eyes met her furious ones. He winced.
“All I mean to say is that this chapel has no easy answers. No matter how you wield the truth, people will bleed. The gods know it too, or Lady Truth wouldn’t weep. I hope you don’t blame yourself.”
Oh. Relief swelled in her chest, unexpected in its arrival and its source. She tempered it with wariness. “You sought my head at the Hearing only yesterday.”
“I was doing my job. Like I said, you and I aren’t so different.
We serve difficult masters, don’t we?” He ruefully indicated the altar.
“I don’t know if I’d prefer serving a fickle public to serving the gods.
Though seeing Blasius humbled was a delight.
Never agreed with his methods, but he’s been an Inquisitor for longer.
” His faint twang turned methods into maythuds.
She blinked. “You’re from the north?”
“Ah.” His features went carefully blank as he dug a finger behind his clerical collar. “Keen ear.”
“I picked up the capital’s accent during the assessors’ visits to Arsamea,” she admitted. “Vowels were my tell too, but I was young and”—Cisuré helped—“malleable.”
“All that to fit into a city that doesn’t want you.”
The air in her lungs turned scalding. Winded, she stared at him. “What do you want?”
“Why would you think—”
“You either stopped me from leaving to impart a religious lesson or a verbal beatdown, and I like to think that Inquisitors have more important things to do than either, so what. Do. You Want?”
His face tautened. “Take a message to the Magus Supreme.”
“I am not Kadra’s errand girl—”
“You are. As I said, the truth cuts.” Gone was his wry, gracious manner. This man was jagged stone. “Yesterday, if you’d lost, the Order would have forced an exorcism on you, saying you were possessed by Ruin.”
She was suddenly terrifyingly aware that the chapel had only one exit.
The length of the nave to the doors seemed to double in distance behind her.
She held his stare, thanking every one of the Elsar that she had activated beshaz, a healer’s rune that could both mend and rend muscle, before she had left home.
“Blasius must be devastated that he failed.” She withdrew her hands from her pockets, readying to snap his ligaments the second he attacked.
His pupils blew wider. “Are you aware of what an exorcism entails? You. Splayed out and chained to the floor in a room so far beneath the Grand Elsarian Temple that no one will hear you scream. Circled by Clerics who’ll take your every plea as proof of madness—”
“And you’d love to put me there, is that it?” Fury pushed her fear aside along with the mental image he described. “That’s what you want me to tell Kadra?—”
“Tell him that he has ruined your life,” Silvus bit out.
“I hear the whisperings of this nation faster than the Tetrarchy. In the past eight months, members of congregations have confessed to me of hatred, revenge, and disgust. They liked things the way they were. You have enemies in places you’ve never heard of, because you trusted a man singularly unworthy of faith.
” Vehemence flushed his face and turned his eyes molten silver, spittle wetting the veil shielding his mouth.
What the fuck? She took an unsteady step back. “What does the Order care when you were about to exorcise me?”
His hard stare tilted over to frustrated bewilderment. “Petitor Sarai,” he spoke slowly. “I am not your enemy. I don’t want to be. The only person to blame for all of this is the Magus Supreme. You’re nineteen and too honest for your own good. He knew better.”
I may as well be arguing with Cisuré. Her chest twinged.
“So, the Order thinks I’m Ruin’s puppet, and you think I’m his.
Thank you for that sterling assessment of my character.
Meanwhile, you’re the one at the pinnacle of a group that has more earthly influence than Ruin and Kadra, and who has used it to ensure that everything in this country stays exactly the same.
” She whirled on her heel, tensing for a breath in case Silvus stalked after her, but he remained at the pulpit.
“When everything comes crashing down, you’ll wish that you had denounced Kadra,” he called after her, sounding oddly resigned. “You’re at the nation’s mercy.”
She let the doors out of the narthex slam shut. The nation has no mercy.
Yet another hard-won truth that had sliced to the bone.
There had been a time, early into her start as a Petitor when she had believed that power would allay her insecurities. In reality, it had worsened them.
True power, the sort that left people untouchable, was inextricably linked to the extent of violence they could mete out.
Consequently, Kadra, as a Twelfth-Tier magus, was equally revered and feared.
She, a Seventh-Tier with about as much skill at swordplay as Harion at flirtation, was prey.
What would it be like to be so powerful that everyone fears me? A cruel thought. And yet—
“You aren’t focusing, barmaid,” Telmar chided, pulling her from the reverie.
His office no longer resembled the cramped abode she’d visited days before the Unraveling to beg for help. Gone were the crates of ibez and dust plumes crowning his books. Now, the mahogany-paneled space felt homey. Despite the corpse at the center of the room.
Telmar tapped his foot on the oiled, leather mat atop which the body rested.
His once-splotchy features had turned pleasantly round-cheeked after he’d given up the bottle.
She initially hadn’t wanted to take private lessons with him out of fear of being perceived as elitist, but he had pointed out that having her in a class with hundreds watching her performance wasn’t conducive to learning.
Despite primarily being a lightning magus and swordsman, an enthusiasm for learning had made him a font of knowledge, albeit a rather strict teacher.
“There’s no need to be gentle when he’s already dead,” he reminded her.
Kneeling beside the dead man, Sarai huffed out a breath, trying to blow away a sweaty tendril stuck to her forehead. “But I won’t be fighting a corpse. The people who want my head are the same who’ll cry about excessive retaliatory measures if I deck them.”
“Then, end them in one blow like you did Aelius.”
She gave him an unamused stare. “I was just on trial for that yesterday.”
“Use a smaller sword.”
Shaking her head, she gripped the corpse’s shoulder and analyzed his circulatory system, noting where best to slice to bring down an assailant.
Beshaz, the most rudimentary rune used by healers, allowed visual and magical access to a body to heal simple ills or cause simple damage.
Without Kadra holding her perpetually quivering fingers still, she could only perform the latter.
“Good,” Telmar concluded when she finished listing all the vessels she could slice as well as the ones beyond beshaz’s reach. “Remember, cut first and think later.”
She exhaled, groggy from the amount of magic she’d used. “There has to be a better way of protecting myself than studying corpses and swordsmanship. Has no one ever permanently increased their power from Seventh-Tier to, say, Tenth-Tier?” she tried hopefully.
Telmar gave her a speaking look. “There’ve been all manner of powders and potions that’ve purported to do that since time immemorial, but there’s always been side effects. Our magic’s linked to our life force. Draw on it too heavily, and you risk death. Just like you did when Summoning Death.”
Gods, what I would give to be that powerful every day.
Spotting the slump of her shoulder, Telmar tutted. “Keep your head high. There isn’t a government alive without enemies. And you’re a savvy one, barmaid. I’m a genius to have seen your potential in Arsamea, even while drunk to the gills.”
She shot him an exasperated look and halted at the pity in his eyes.
“That Hearing must have been hard.”
“I was hoping I was subtle.”
“About the fact that you offered yourself up as a target? I’d say Edessa realizes that now.”