The words became clearer and morphed into the voices of two women. “… tell you, this house is haunted.”
“Stop being ridiculous. You saw a couple of papers get swept up by the wind, that’s all.”
“There was no wind, that’s what I’m trying to tell you! By the Radiant Lord, I swear there was no wind!”
“Uh-huh. I believe you. The holy residence of an inquisitor, achurchproperty, is haunted. I wonder who they should call to purge it.”
The voices came from a thin door next to the staircase. Any moment now, it would open, and Semras would be caught.
She froze in place. A silent panic had numbed her limbs, and she listened powerlessly as the voices crept closer.
“You don’t have to mock my beliefs. We’re all from below stairs.”
“And below stairs is where we’re bringing this laundry to. Come on, you haven’t worked here for long, but you’ll quickly learn there are drafts everywhere in this old mansion. You Andakkadians may live in the Empire next to your diabalhs and elementals, but here in Vandalesia, the Inquisition keeps a tight watch over any stray spirits, so there’s no need to believe that …”
The voices drifted further away, and Semras never saw who they belonged to. Baffled, she stared at the small door, then crept closer. Slowly, carefully, she opened it.
The dim light within revealed a narrow staircase going up and down, with barely a landing to get out of it from the door she had opened. The women had descended directly downstairs; they never needed to step out and go through the main staircase.
Exhaling with relief, Semras softly closed the door, then prowled further down the corridors.
When the study’s door stood at long last in front of her, no light seeped from beneath it. Tension seeped from her shoulders. She had made it.
Trying to escape the mansion would have been foolish. The inquisitor’s dutiful Venator dogs would have caught her before she’d even reached the gates, and then he’d throw her into a realcell this time. If she wanted a chance at fleeing Castereina, she needed her hands back.
And she needed proof of her innocence. Otherwise, as soon as she’d run, the murderer would sign an arrest warrant designating her as the culprit, and she’d spend her life jumping at shadows. She couldn’t leave until she had proof that she was being framed, at least.
That was why she stood there, in front of his office in the small hours of the night. If the monster had any spare keys to her witch-shackles, she’d find them there, along with whatever fabrication of guilt he was working on.
Semras had told him he wouldn’t get away with this. She’d make good on her words.
The door yielded to her soft push with a low creak. Behind it, the study was in an advanced state of chaos—even more so than the last time she stood there. She crept inside, then carefully closed the door behind her.
Darkness permeated the room. Rows of books lay on the floor, left open here and there. Semras cautiously stepped around them to approach the desk.
The contents of a nearby evidence box had been spread on its surface. One by one, she examined each item. First, an autopsy report, dated the day after her imprisonment, confirmed all she had told the murderer about the toxicology. Other papers revealed he had been busy cross-checking the victim’s staff testimonies and combing through his correspondence, which he had summarized in notes visibly written under poor lighting conditions.
In their margin, a few scribbled lines had been highlighted multiple times:‘Torqedan’s secretary wrote all of his correspondence. Might know where the missing letter is? Need to interrogate.’
And beneath:‘Did not know. Incriminating letter still missing.’
Frowning, Semras took a mental note of that ‘incriminating letter.’ If she could get her hands on it, maybe she could use it to shield herself and her sisters from a false accusation. But she couldn’t put any hope on it; the inquisitor was still looking for whatever paper he had mistakenly left behind, and he’d most probably destroy it if—no, once—once he found it.
Among the papers lay many of the personal effects of Eloy Torqedan. Two caught her attention: an unfolded letter bearing an apothecary guild’s seal and a small diary opened to one page.
The witch seized the letter and scanned it eagerly, then dropped it with a groan. It was only a pharmaceutical note on the usage and dosage of common comfrey—not prickly comfrey—addressed to Tribunal Torqedan. The date had been smudged by a water stain, but it meant little when it wasn’t what she’d hoped for: definite proof of where her captor had procured what he needed to tamper with Torqedan’s medicine.
Semras moved on to the diary. Written in a tiny scrawl, the text looked like a mix of memoirs and manifestos. Her eyes jumped from word to word.
‘… is changing into a world where the Inquisition is no longer needed. Alongside us, the witch Covens are in decline too, but their roots are deep and resilient. Long after the fey blood of witches will have diluted into nothingness, their pagan beliefs will have spread, grown, and survived through spiritual successors.’
‘If nothing is done, the Inquisition will fade into obscurity while they endure, hidden behind new secret societies and names. Our holy war against the Ever-Encroaching Void, lost after nearly a millennium of fighting. If we are to survive, we must adapt to modernity, and—’
A hand clamped over her mouth. “Shh!”
Startled, Semras turned to stare into the warm hazel eyes of Themas. Horror shuddered through her. She’d been caught, and the knight would now drag her back to her cage, and the monster would know about her escape attempt, and he would punish her, or kill her perhaps, or worse, or—
“Forgive me for the fright,” Themas whispered, “but there is no need to worry. I simply didn’t want to startle you and alert anyone passing by. I will remove my hand now.”
