There were no adventure books at all when it came to the inquisitors of the Office of Truth. In her mind, an inquisitor was a muscular, potbellied man with a black veil over his head who carried torturing implements. He’d be the sort to look right at home in a dungeon with some poor sorcerer’s blood on his face.
Which was why, on the morning of the fifth day of her escape, she could hardly believe Eldred when he told her the veryordinary-looking man and woman sitting at the middle table in the inn’s dining hall were inquisitors of the Office of Truth.
There were many people in the hall. Arienne lowered her voice.
“How do you know?”
“I can smell their master’s stench. They are the minions of the wretch Lysandros.”
“Who is Lysandros?” It was not a rare name in the Capital.
“Their superior, who else? Unlikely they’re here to do anything to you. Their mission is probably to keep you in sight until Lysandros arrives. Turn your head toward them as naturally as possible.”
She did. In the corner of her eye, both quickly looked away from her and at their bowls of porridge. The two of them looked like mundane travelers in their thirties. The knives they wore on their belts might attract attention in the city, but they were crucial tools for anyone on the road. Their gray clothes and leather shoes were also typical. The medallions they wore around their necks, however, were distinct. Arienne turned her eyes back toward her own bowl.
Why had they followed her all the way here? Arienne had safely left the Capital and passed several guard posts without incident. No one seemed to be looking for a runaway sorcerer. Only thieves, murderers, or traitors, their likenesses drawn on broadsheets and plastered on the billboards along the road. Arienne had begun to hope for the past few days that the Office of Truth had been completely thrown off her scent.
Eldred said,“If you were alone, the Office of Truth would have issued bulletins, and a hundred legionaries would be looking for you at every legion watchpost. And you would have been caught. But Lysandros is being careful not to let too many people know about your escape, as I am his little secret.”
Arienne was only a runaway sorcerer. But Eldred was a Power generator who had maintained his sense of self. Perhaps the only one that had in the whole world. It was a secret that must be kept from the legions, evidently. Maybe that was why he had been buried so deeply at the Academy.
But that would mean the Office of Truth knew the truth about Eldred.
“… Then do they know you’re in my mind right now?”
“Maybe not those miserable underlings. But Lysandros might have an inkling. He knows what kind of sorcery I’m capable of.”
“Whoisthis man?”
Eldred ignored her question.“Now might be a good time to lose them. Since you can’t function as a proper sorcerer.”
“And you can?” Arienne scoffed into her food, but he was right. She had to lose them.
Arienne forced down the breakfast she was suddenly too nervous to eat. The sausages, porridge, bread, even fruit and vegetables, grew odder and stranger in colors and shapes the farther she got from the Capital. What had food tasted like in Arland? Would it also feel strange on her tongue?
She rose from the table and took the steps up to her room. It was impossible not to feel the eyes of the two inquisitors once she became aware of them, but she forced herself to act normal. Locking the door behind her once she was in the room, she picked up her sack and looked out the window. The building was a low two stories; she figured she could safely land a jump from this height, though breaking a leg while the Office of Truth agents were this close would be a death sentence. She spotted a drainage pipe next to the window.
The windowsill was just wide enough to support her foot as she stepped up onto it. The copper pipe was blue green with rust, and the wooden pegs that fastened it to the wall hardly looked strong enough to sustain a good wind, much less her with her traveling pack in tow. Hoping she had perhaps lost some weight the past five days on the road, Arienne slowly gripped the pipe and eased her body off the window ledge. The pipe creaked, but it did not tear from the wall and send her crashing to her capture. Gripping it lightly with her hands and knees, she slid carefully down the side of the inn, holding her breath until she reached the ground.
The inquisitors had no doubt ridden here on horses. Leaving by the main road now would guarantee her capture. But going too deep into the woods risked meeting wolves or getting lost. As she was thinking through the best course of action, she noticed a tower rising above the forest pine.
A sorcerer’s tower. Before the arrival of the Empire, many sorcerers cloistered themselves in such towers. They had been built all over the world, and maybe sorcerers somewhere did still live and practice their arts in them, but not here. Some of the towers right outside the Capital housed Power generators now, but this one looked dark and quiet.
Arienne crouched low, and with as much stealth as possible—another thing they didn’t teach at the Academy—she stole away into the forest.
The tower was farther away than she’d thought, and it was just past noon when she arrived. No one seemed to be following her, but there was nothing she could do about her footprints in the snow aside from using bare rocks as stepping stones or crossing streamsshe did not need to cross. Not having spent much time outdoors, she wasn’t sure whether such methods would be effective. The stream water that seeped into her boots had her feet aching with cold.
The tower was narrow, but it was taller than any tree in the forest. There wasn’t a single inch of it not covered in ivy. Each block of stone was outlined in lichen. The door had crumbled to the point where not even fragments of it remained. The tower had been abandoned for a long time.
The inside was dim, but there was some sunlight filtering through the ivy that covered the windows. The staircase that spiraled up the interior connected the floors of the tower, or at least the floors that hadn’t caved in from rot. The stone stairs themselves, however, were intact.
She climbed it up and up, reminded in reverse of when she had gone down deep into the underground of the Academy to steal Eldred.
The topmost floor had not caved in. Mysterious metal instruments were scattered about, smashed into pieces. There was a half-burned tapestry hanging by a single rusty nail. She took it down and unfurled it to reveal a star chart.
“This was an observatory…”
At the upper end of the broken ladder was a skylight. Arienne pictured whoever lived here having gone up the ladder to observe the stars and augur the future. Maybe from the stars, that sorcerer had learned the fate that awaited them, had foreseen the arrival of the Empire that would conquer them.
