were the cost of that. Who knows what's happening in Alexander's strange little head?'
'What did you say about ruin? The ruin of what?' I asked.
'Of nothing. Of everything. You know our sins, child of Morgan. The blackness that we created, the destruction that we wrought. It gave birth to a form, a form that lives in this lake.'
'What now?' Cassandra asked. 'Some kind of monster?'
'Some kind of darkness,' the Elemental answered. 'We built our temples to try to purge it. It absorbed all our pain, all our vile terror, and fed it back to us. More with each sin, always more.'
'Is it still here?' she asked.
'It must be. We did not purge it, but it no longer speaks to us. Your Alexander knows of it. We always thought…' He paused, as if weighing us. 'We always thought it was the burden of that sin that kept us from ascending completely. We may have been wrong. Alexander seemed to think it could… sponge up divinity. Swallow the light of the holy.'
'And hold it,' Cassandra said. 'Like a battery.'
'But what about-' I started.
The Elemental raised a hand. 'I'm sorry, but there is nothing more I can tell you, because there is nothing more I can know.' He stood and ritually brushed off the knees of his robe. 'I wish you well, scions of Morgan and Amon. It is quite a task you face.'
'Wait! You didn't actually answer any real questions!'
'You did not ask any real questions. I can hardly be blamed for that.'
He turned and stepped off the edge of the porch, to disappear among the mass of Feyr that surrounded us. They began milling about, until we lost sight of the Elemental.
'That's great,' Cassandra said. 'You think we could come back later?'
'Maybe we can make an appointment,' I answered. We went back the way we came, past the wooden houses. The place looked abandoned now. 'I get the feeling that he doesn't talk to a lot of people, though.'
'Other than the gods, that is. And neither of us is Alexander.'
'No,' I said. 'We certainly aren't. Nor Amon, nor Morgan. And we don't know what Alexander knows, or what he's doing to maintain the cycle. If he's using that damned Ruin.' I looked up at the bricklined ceiling and grimaced. 'Not yet, anyway.'
15
he old part of Ash is nice, especially in the early fall. The worst of summer is past, the worst of winter far away. The air is clean, probably the only clean breath you'll get in the whole city. Distant winds come down from the Crow's Teeth Mountains, wash across the vast plains of the collar, and break over the lake, right into the Brothers' Spear. That air carries the smell of the harvest and the cold promise of snow.
There are a lot of old buildings on the lakeshore, stones that were raised under Amon's watchful eye. Picturesque arches cross canals that once fed the mercantile heart of the Fraterdom, but now serve nothing more than pleasure rafts and private boats. This district has been spared the modern touch. No monotrains, no glass towers, no waterway access to speak of. Just glorious old architecture and cobblestone streets, and the kind of boutiques that sell things no one really needs.
Which is why I hadn't been back since my acceptance into the Paladin. Passing through doesn't count, and the bit of sneaking I did on the edges of this district, following Simeon to his unfortunate meeting with Elector Nathaniel, doesn't either. No, for all my dedication to the old ways of my Cult, I had left this district to other pedestrians.
'The parade,' I said, much to the surprise of my companion. 'I suppose the parade comes through here. I'm usually too tired at that point from walking in formation to really notice.'
'Notice what?' she asked.
'Oh. The buildings. The shops. It's really a nice area.'
Cassandra looked around at the picture windows and colored awnings. I couldn't help but note how different this was from the Library Desolate. I wondered how long she had been in there, anyway. I asked.
'Five years, more or less. I've been visiting since I was a kid.' I snorted at that. Still a kid, kid. 'My parents didn't like it, but they supported my decision to dedicate.'
'They still alive?'
'I don't know. I guess.' She folded her arms into her sleeves and squinted out over the water. 'I guess when I say `support,' I mean they didn't physically stop me.'
'Mm. Well. You ever been to this part of town before?'
'No. No reason.'
'Yeah.'
We had walked most of the way here, which in itself was unusual. Lots of pedigears here, rumbling down the street. Even at this hour. Easy enough to pass unseen, though. That lack of the modern touch also meant the street lighting was archaic. We were standing in an alleyway, not two blocks from the Spear of the Brothers. I could see the underlights splashing off the white stone and bathing the surrounding buildings in its pale reflection. We were in the worst part of the nice part of town, the sort of dark alleys that elected officials skulked down to find mistresses and vices and the like. Not a lot of that business going on tonight, though. The city was in upheaval. Even the vice making was in chaos.
'Let's assume that you know where the archive is,' Cassandra said. 'How do you propose we get in there?'
'That's assuming a lot. Specifically, it assumes something that's untrue.' I leaned against the wall and sighed. 'The good thing is that we don't have to worry about sneaking in. Not until we know where we're sneaking to, I suppose.'
'I suppose,' Cassandra echoed.
We had decided that we didn't know enough. That should have been obvious, but it took us a while to accept it. Cassandra thought the evidence from our little archive was more than enough to exonerate Amon and nail Alexander to a wall. Any wall. The girl wasn't picky. I wasn't ready to give up on Amon as the Betrayer, at least not on the scant findings we had in hand. I think I was just putting it off, really. Even if we had absolute proof that Alexander killed Morgan, what good would it do? Who would believe an escaped Amonite and the last of the Paladins of Morgan?
It didn't matter. We had to know. So we decided to seek out the theoretical hidden archive. If Alexander was keeping a body of knowledge to himself, grooming his own personal cadre of Amonites to care for it, and using that knowledge to prevent this 'turning of the sky' that the Feyr Elemental had talked about… well, I wanted to know about it. If we found out some other truth about Morgan's death, that was fine. We would deal with that on discovery.
Thing was, this other archive was just a story. We didn't know it really existed. We certainly didn't know where it was. Just made sense to start at the Spear, close to the godking's throne.
I was done with waiting. The Spear was a simple building, surrounded by other administrative chambers that served as the seat of government in Ash. We would start in one of those other buildings and work our way to the center, or down, or whatever path felt right. I trusted the Hunter.
One thing bugged me most. Infiltration, spying, sneaking in… this was Betrayer work. And Cassandra was better at it than I was comfortable with. She had gotten us uniforms, even disguised the archive as some kind of street-sweeping gear. My sword and holster were hidden in an enormously complicated staff of office that I almost had to drag along. Administrators liked their relics of office, even if they held no noetic power. Mine at least had a revolver and a sword stuffed inside. The articulated sheath stayed on my back, retracted under the robes of state Cassandra had produced. She had gone out without me and returned with her gifts.
'These are good,' I said when she handed them to me. 'You practice this stuff?'
'Just a matter of hijacking an automated loom, tuning it up a bit. The owner will actually thank me, when he
