“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 turnedmethodsintomaythuds.
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 amnotKadra’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 activatedbeshaz, 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 theGrand 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’swhat 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. Theylikedthings 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 toexorciseme?”
His hard stare tilted over to frustrated bewilderment. “Petitor Sarai,” he spoke slowly. “Iam 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 staysexactlythe 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—
