“Petitors Veritas,” he murmured. “Seekers of Truth. The title of your job has shortened over the years, but you and I aren’t so different. We provide the thirteen lands with clarity. You examine trees. I see the forest.”
She stiffened at his meaning. The Order had chapters throughout the world. Eyes and ears that fed Inquisitors information and kept people staring skyward, contemplating a glorious afterlife rather than societal pains. Meanwhile, the Tetrarchy received limited news from outside Edessa’s walls and relied entirely on Praetors and Tribunes to send them their locales’ grievances.
Silvus blithely planted his chin in his hand and smiled. “Governments aren’t institutions that inspire much devotion.”
No, philosophies do. Like the Order. “Are you bragging, Inquisitor?”
His brows rose. “I only thought to note that you and your lover have legitimized the use of political violence. A dangerous precedent. Now, it can be used against you.”
Air burned out of her lungs in a bitter exhale, fogging the frigid air.Lover. The designation wouldn’t make a man lose credibility but the whistles and jeers that accompanied Silvus’s pronouncement was proof that she had. He’d eroded the cautious trust she had built with the audience in mere seconds.
“The Elsarian Order demonizes violence when it’s often the only way for oppressed peoples to throw off their yoke,” she bit out. “Would you rather that we’d left Aelius’s scuta to set Edessa aflame?”
“If your rule requires violence to enforce it, then is it legitimate?”
“I didn’t kill Aelius to enforce anyone’s rule, but to see justice done.” She struggled to keep her voice calm when the spectators’ epithets grew louder. “Perhaps the Order spends too much time watching forests to seeit, but sometimes, the only way to justiceisblood. Because the law, as largely shaped by religious determinations of morality, has failed people.”
That earned her a chorus of contemplative murmurs, but Silvus’s gray gaze lit with laughter. “Then, I hope you never fail the people. It would be a pity to see you impaled on your own blade.”
Unease pricked at her nape. “I—”
“We’ve heard enough of your rationale.” Verentia held up a hand. “Relate that day’s events.”
Her lips parted to repeat the same sequence she had given before curious crowds and diplomats for months in an effort at transparency. It had changed nothing. The fatigue she’d been reining in throughout the deluge of work since the Unraveling swamped her. The Elsarian Order were vultures, waiting for her collapse.
You wish it had been you. It was in their clenched jaws, slitted eyes.The most important moment for the Elsarian religion in decades, and one of your own wasn’t behind it. Sliding her frigid fingers into her pockets for warmth, she ended her recitation.
“Quite a tale.” Verentia’s frenetic tapping on Cassandane’s seat resumed. “How well-versed are you in the Codices?”
“I haven’t read much beyond the Gospels of Wisdom.”
“Have you pledged yourself to any god?”
Sarai tensed at the Inquisitor’s thoughtful mien.What are you planning?“I haven’t.”
“Have you encountered one of the Elsar before?”
The audience was rapt, quiet. “I saw Lord Death some five years ago when I nearly died at Tetrarchs Aelius and Tullus’s hands,” she reminded them. Judging by the yowling from Aelius’s worshippers, they thought he should have finished the job.
“Unlearned and unpledged, yet you’ve seen one of the most elusive of the Elsartwice.” Verentia ceased her tapping. “Why do you think Lord Death appeared toyouand not one of his many faithful?”
Sarai watched her warily. “Because I was able to Summon him.”
“So, you’re a Twelfth-Tier magus then?” Verentia’s teeth gleamed. Her trap sprung shut.
Shit.Sarai flinched.
Among the challenges posed by her lack of formal education was her limited understanding of the complexities of magic. Her lessons with Magus Telmar had taught her that it wasn’t so simple as an inner wellspring of power that was unlocked upon use of a rune.
A magic-user, or magus’s, body had twelve inner Thresholds—spigots of varying strength. Crossing the First provided a trickle of power, sustainable for over a day by most. Runes likezostathat she used for Examination, required opening of the Fourth Threshold and could drain her in fifteen hours. But crossing the Twelfth unleashed a torrent that bled the user of magic and killed them in minutes—magic and life force being intertwined. Almost no one had the control to seal the Twelfth Threshold after crossing it. But the rare,rare, unfathomably powerful user who could access and leash that deluge of power at will were known as Twelfth-Tier magi. Like Aelius. And Kadra.
Not her.
A smile crawled across Blasius’s face at her silence. “You are aware,certo, that Summoning runes are largely Twelfth-Tier Runes and require the user to cross the Twelfth Threshold?”
“I am.”
“Then, you should have no difficulty with my question,” Verentia said smoothly. “Are you a Twelfth-Tier magus?”
