The Last Sin

As the door creaked open, I waited for a reaction: a shuffle of feet on the floor, a string being drawn tight, or gears spinning into motion. I was rewarded with silence. I knelt, running my lit hand just above the entrance floor—no trip wire. I inhaled and took my first few steps through the door.

The interior of the building looked like a small office for dispatching mail, with dark wood furnishings that looked durable and expensive. The floor was scattered with loose paper, mostly blank with shredded notes written in faded ink. Empty bookshelves stood against the stone walls. Someone had packed and left in a hurry. If I had to guess, they left during the riots that Mother Geslin described. I found more evidence at the main desk on the other side of the room.

Just off to the desk’s side was a brazier overflowing with ashes and pieces of burned paper. I twisted the dagger from my cane and poked through the remnants. The brazier had been stuffed full, with the paper at the top of the pile singed black instead of incinerated. I made out fragments of High Elvish on the burned surface, another layer of security in case anyone among this group of farmers could read Low Elvish. This building was some kind of communication centre, trading in messages important enough to be written in High Elvish. If only I could find one of those messages intact.

As I walked around the brazier, my foot brushed against something. I bent down to investigate and found a plain brown book under the desk; it was open, its spine facing up. I read the High Elvish title.

“Announcements and Declarations: Volume 31.”

I sheathed my dagger and reached out for it. When I touched it, I felt the sensation of something hungry, a vessel waiting to be filled. I knew this feeling. It was just like my dagger.

This book was enchanted.

I lifted the book onto the desk with my free hand. On closer inspection, it was more like a tome, easily over a thousand pages long. The lack of decoration was also suspicious. Why would an enchanted book written in High Elvish look so ordinary? I flipped open the cover just as I considered the possibility of magical traps. Instead of a fireball to the face, I was met with a page of short messages.

The messages were also in High Elvish, beginning with a date and then two or more lines of text. As I flipped through the pages, the pattern became clear. The messages were like the public announcements a town crier would make in a city square, except these messages were specifically for Sanctifiers. Each message was chronological, starting as far back as seven years ago and getting closer to the present. I skipped to the book's last pages, and my eyes widened.

There were announcements from this year, this month, this week.

This book had been locked in this building for years. How was this possible? Of course, that was the book's enchantment—the same kind of enchantment that let me call my dagger to my hand, the same magic that let me check in on Elmer while he slept in the capital.

This book was linked to another book in a different location. Messages in that book were copied to this one through that magical bond.

I sat in the desk's chair, lighting one of the half-melted candles on the desktop to rub my temples with both hands. It was a lot to take in. Not only did long-range communication exist, but the Sanctifiers had kept this innovation for themselves. Worst of all, they used spoken High Elvish to do it. It was the only way to enchant objects.

It made no sense.

No… it made perfect sense.

The Sanctifiers forbade spoken High Elvish to prevent the general population from picking up the language by ear. This left only one way to learn High Elvish: by becoming a Sanctifier or being taught by one. The Sanctifier Guild was gatekeeping High Elvish and enchantment for themselves and their allies. The only other group that still spoke High Elvish in Luskaine was… the elves of the Great Northwestern Forest.

A chill ran up my spine.

Is that why Alden Able wanted me to become an indentured servant to the Sanctifiers?

A half-elf could easily slip into their community and do serious damage.

I leaned back into the wooden chair and sighed. It was strange that the leader of the capital’s Guildhall would deal with me directly. Now I knew why I’d been given such “special” treatment. Part of me wished I had never opened this door, but another part, the practical part, was glad. I had spent too much of my life being a pawn in plans I was too ignorant to see. I was not that naïve orphan anymore. Not for Sin. Not for Alden.

I glanced at the open book on the desk. I needed more information, any information that could give me an edge over the Sanctifiers. I hunched over the book and read the latest pages by candlelight.

I paused at the mention of Rugar in the book. Our fight with Rugar's men last month made news among the Sanctifiers. I paused again at an unfamiliar High Elvish word. This was a new word created by humans after the fall of the Old Elvish Empire. Its equivalent in Low Elvish would be…

Inquisitor.

My mouth went dry.

The Sanctifiers had dispatched a special inquisitor to investigate the attack on Rugar's men. Apparently, he was a large donor to their organization. The inquisitor would also investigate the eyewitness accounts of powerful Landbound magic at Miller's Hill.

Not good… No. Bad. Very bad.

Inquisitors were the enforcers of the Sanctifier Guild. With the backing of the most powerful organization in the Abyssal Lands, they were untouchable. And now one of them was on our tail. No, they could be ahead of us with the time we took to let Castille heal. The inquisitor could have asked the regulars at the Gentleman’s Rest where we were going. It wasn’t a secret.

I shot up from the chair and scooped the book under my arm. If the inquisitor arrived in Steeltown, they could blow our whole mission. Worse, they could reveal that we were mages. The others needed to know. We needed to leave the Dellends. I sprinted out of the Sanctifier building.

This quest was doomed to fail from the start.