“I know where,” said Sigrid, “though I cannot remember which cell has it. It is a famous chant: the Chief will be able to help you. Be careful how much you learn about those men, though. They have many ears, even in here, and if you want to know about their foundation, someone will report that to them.”
“Not you, though?” said Keturah.
“What do you think?” said Sigrid, staring out at the bridge. She put more wood on the fire. “But someone will.”
“I doubt it matters. I’m no threat to them or the stability of the country,” observed Keturah.
“It does matter,” said Sigrid. “They are an organisation of almost unlimited power and jealousy, entirely separate from the law. Sometimes I think the Academy is too reserved. Nobody asks about the Kryptea because nobody knows to ask. We don’t volunteer information unless people come to seek it.”
“The only threat they pose is to my husband.”
“And yet they murdered those two legionaries,” said Sigrid, referring to those who had been killed in retribution for Uvoren’s foiled attempt on Roper’s life. She took a sip of her own tea. “Everyone knew the Kryptea were not behind the assassination and so their name was unsullied, but they took vengeance anyway. That was an action of spite. Do not disregard the Kryptea.
“You see those berserkers? We have thousands of them here, living below the pyramid. In full battle-madness, they would tear apart every bit of the Hindrunn beyond the lake. They could protect us from a legion, but they could not protect us from a Kryptean. We don’t know who they are, we don’t know how many they number. We don’t know how they are recruited, how they are trained, or if they have women in their ranks.”
“They must,” said Keturah, “or they’re brainless. The women of this fortress are far freer in their movements than the men, and much less likely to be suspected of murder.”
“No one has ever caught a Kryptean agent,” said Sigrid. “So we don’t know. The Kryptea is not the safeguard from tyranny that everyone thinks it is. The Ephors protect us from over-ambitious Black Lords. The Kryptea has no function beyond the long shadow that it casts. It is a toxic fungus whose roots go too deep to ever be cut out. I have learned what I can of them and, as far as can be told, no one has ever caught one of them. How do you stop them when you don’t even know how they act? Were those men killed beneath the cuckoo truly guilty? Everyone has just assumed they were.”
Keturah considered this. “I suppose I never questioned it.”
Sigrid touched her hand briefly. “Just take care.”
“Everyone’s been saying that to me.”
“You should heed their advice.” Sigrid glanced pointedly at Keturah’s newly sprouted hair.
“I think you may be the first person who’s told me to take care where I may indeed heed it,” said Keturah.
Sigrid thought about that for a moment. “Why?”
“Usually, I’m told to take care by people who would be too scared to do what I’m doing. They tell me to take care because they wish they had the confidence to try it themselves and don’t want to be made to feel inadequate by someone doing what they would like to.”
Sigrid was watching Keturah steadily. “Well, it’s true, I don’t have the faith in my own abilities that you have,” she said. “I think you’re right, a lot of the time, envy makes people react strangely. It bursts out of them before they know it. It is good to live bravely, but remember that inexperience can make you naïve. And with the Kryptea, you won’t get two chances to make a mistake. One will kill you.”
The light was failing and there was a pink tinge to the sky in the west before the Chief Historian arrived, but Keturah had been prepared to wait on such an important woman and besides, she had Sigrid’s company. It was Keturah’s first encounter with the Chief Historian. She was almost as tall as Keturah herself, with a sheet of steel hair, white-blue eyes and heavily lined skin hanging from the startlingly prominent architecture of her face. “Keturah Tekoasdottir?” She stared down at the still-kneeling Keturah.
“That is I, my lady,” said Keturah, getting to her feet and giving a polite smile.
“Good. My name is Frathi Akisdottir.” The Chief Historian’s eyes had settled heavily on Keturah’s. “What can I do for you, miss?”
“I have an interest in one particular chant and hoped that you might be able to take me around the Academy as well,” said Keturah. “I’ve had a long-standing interest in being an acolyte.”
“You are very young to have had a long-standing interest,” observed the Chief Historian. “Which chant do you wish to hear?”
“Whichever details the assassination of Lelex,” said Keturah.
The Chief Historian did not react at all for a moment. Then she said: “The formation of the Kryptea?”
Keturah shrugged. “Indeed.”
“You will need to be swift,” said the historian. “The cells are nearly leaving for the evening run. Come.” She turned on her heel and started back through the corridor through which she had arrived: that on the right. Keturah waved at Sigrid, who semi-smiled in return and watched her leave.
The corridor down which Keturah was being led skirted the outside of the Academy: an open colonnade that almost kissed the hard waters of the lake. It appeared, despite the rallying darkness and though it stretched in a broad arc that made it possible to see fifty yards ahead, that they were completely alone in the passage. Every five yards or so on their left was a door of flat, greyish-white wood that looked like it might be hornbeam: a wood that showed little mercy to its carpenters, both in its fiendish difficulty to work and its tendency to warp and crack. On the wall surrounding
