Page 52 of A Tower of Half-Truths

Thirty-One

After two months of living in the city, a walk in the forest was nothing short of exhilarating. Granted, Weywode Forest was still part of Leyport, just beyond the city walls. But it was far enough to be disconnected from the buildings, the grime, and—most importantly—the noise.

These thousand acres were the Duke of Leyland’s personal hunting grounds; outside of hunting season, they were open to commoners. Mavery had escaped into Weywode Forest a handful of times during her first stint in Leyport. Unlike the rest of the city, this place had hardly changed over the years.

Everywhere she looked, she was surrounded by evergreen trees and verdant understory. Looking up, the sky was barely visible through the canopy of treetops. She breathed in the crisp air. There wasn’t a hint of stagnant water, garbage, or horses.

Her body was stiff from having slept on the sofa last night, but she’d mentioned not a word of it to Alain.

If she suggested feeling even the slightest discomfort, he would sacrifice his bed for her in a heartbeat, even though he needed a good night’s rest more than she did.

The deeper into the forest she walked, the more her muscles rejoiced at being allowed to stretch properly, to not feel the pressure of cobblestones beneath her feet.

As she took another deep breath, her arcana pulsed beneath her skin, alert but not recalcitrant. She quickened her pace.

“Slow…down…please,” Alain gasped.

She looked over her shoulder and realized she’d gotten a dozen or so paces ahead of him. With his gray hooded travel cloak and his staff, Alain looked more “wizardly” than ever. And that included looking old and feeble for a change.

“Sorry.” Mavery stopped and waited for him to catch up. “Got a little overeager just now.”

“That’s…all well…and good,” Alain panted. “But do keep in mind, this is a bit more strenuous than a stroll through the city streets.”

He leaned against his staff as he caught his breath. Not even a quarter mile into this walk, and his forehead already glistened with sweat.

“Is your chest still bothering you?” she asked.

“Oh, no, that’s now fully healed. My legs aren’t used to this level of exertion.”

Though he did plenty of pacing around his apartment, that hardly compared to an outdoor walk. And there had been many days lately when he’d remained sitting for hours on end. Until now, Mavery hadn’t even considered how woefully out of shape he was, even for an academic.

“We can take a break—”

“No, let’s press on,” Alain said, “at a more leisurely pace, if you don’t mind.”

She smiled. “Of course.”

Side by side, they continued onward. Mavery’s fingers itched to close the small distance between them and take his hand.

They’d only passed a handful of other people strolling along the trail, and they were now completely alone, but she kept her hands firmly at her sides.

She’d crossed enough boundaries as of late: staying at Alain’s apartment, sharing his bed.

Though she’d rectified the latter, she’d made no progress yet on the former.

And now, coming to this somewhat remote forest had been her idea.

Work was the reason for this excursion. So, she shifted her focus to searching for arcane resonances—potential anchors hidden among the underbrush—and alchemical ingredients that were easier to spot.

Persilweed grew rampant here, as it did wherever there was a bit of soil and a hint of sunlight, but she was hoping to find something more noteworthy.

A few minutes down the path, she stopped to point out a cluster of bushes at the center of a copse.

“I think those are drottberries,” she said. “That’s odd. I figured they’d be deeper in the forest than this.”

She approached the copse at a light jog.

“We hardly have time for foraging,” Alain called. “We only have a few hours of daylight remaining.”

Mavery scoffed. “And whose fault is that? You were the one who insisted on running errands all morning, then took forever getting ready. Besides, I’ve noticed your stores are running low.”

She slung off her pack and leaned over a bush to examine the vibrant red berries. Behind her, Alain sighed, then his footsteps and the thud of his staff grew closer.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “We might as well make the most of this trip, though I can’t say I have any need for drottberries.”

“They could be drottberries,” she said, “or they could be baneberries. It’s always hard to tell the difference.”

“So, we will either reveal our deepest, darkest secrets—or we will suffer hallucinations and excruciating pain for hours before finally succumbing to death.” He chuckled. “I can’t say I’m willing to take that particular gamble.”

Mavery opened her pack and peered inside, though the ambient light was too dim for her to differentiate anything inside the iridescent void.

That was the downside of the Transmutation spell.

She reached the entire length of her arm, from fingertips to armpit, inside the pack and fished around blindly.

Her fingers brushed against paper, and she pulled out her Compendium.

She put her pack aside and began flipping through the bundle of pages.

“I know I have something in here somewhere…”

Alain stepped closer until he was behind her shoulder.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“I call this my Compendium of Knowledge. I can’t believe I’ve never had a chance to show you until now. Ah! Here we are.”

She turned to a section containing pages from an herbalist’s field guide she’d pilfered over a decade ago. The paper was exceptionally worn, her notes in the margins so smudged they were almost indecipherable.

“Five-pointed leaves.” She closed the Compendium with a sigh. “Baneberries.”

“A shame,” Alain said, “though I’m more interested in that book of yours.”

She handed it over, then watched him slowly flip through the collection of mismatched pages.

She appreciated his care, but the book only appeared more delicate than it actually was.

The pages were bound together with thick, high-quality thread, and it had so far managed to withstand the test of time—and being jostled around in her pack.

“I started with some of my first-year textbooks from Atterdell,” she said. “I then added other books I picked up in my, er, travels.”

He raised a brow. “I presume the majority of them weren’t purchased from a bookshop.”

“You know me,” Mavery said with a shrug. “I would cut out chapters and sections, based on what interested me the most at the time. What you see now is an effort two decades in the making.”

Alain blanched. “Stealing books is one thing, but defiling them?”

She rolled her eyes. “They’re far more useful in this state than collecting dust in some noble bastard’s library. And it’s not as though I had any better options. Until yesterday, my pack wasn’t equipped with a Transmutation spell. I couldn’t haul an entire library along with me.”

As Alain continued skimming through the Compendium, Mavery caught a quirk of his eyebrows, a softening of his eyes, a slight upturn of his lips. His smile widened when he reached the most recent additions: the incantations he’d written during her Etherean lessons.

“This is remarkable,” he said. “All this time, you’ve been curating a miniature library, like being your very own arcanist.”

“I shouldn’t have to.” Mavery shook her head. “All this time, I’ve wondered why this knowledge is so easy for wizards and the wealthy to acquire, yet near impossible for everyone else.”

Alain handed back the Compendium, and she returned it to her pack.

“The knowledge we keep in university libraries can be dangerous in the wrong hands,” he said. “Best to leave it to those with years of education and training, who know how to use that knowledge responsibly.”

She laughed. “Right, so you’re saying there’s never, in all of history, been a single wizard who misused that knowledge? That most forms of Necromancy, for example, were banned for the hells of it?”

He hesitated, and she gave him a satisfied smirk as he struggled to come up with a rebuttal.

“That’s a fair point,” he said, “but are you actually suggesting we allow common people unlimited access to arcane knowledge?”

“Why not? The way I see it, knowledge isn’t good or evil—it just is. And like you said, only those with the proper training will know what to do with it, so why not make it accessible to everyone? Why hoard books away in universities—or in private libraries, for that matter?”

Alain frowned. Mavery knew they were both thinking of the apartment at Steelforge Towers, the room filled with books.

While Alain had used a few tomes for his research, the vast majority of his collection likely hadn’t been read in years.

Mavery had even come across books with uncut pages.

Was his library really any different than the one in Roven’s manor, or the scores of others she’d robbed over the years?

They returned to the trail, but Alain walked only a few paces before coming to a sudden stop.

“Look!” he whispered, pointing to something further down the path.

Mavery gasped. She hadn’t expected to find wild demonspawn so close to the city, but about a hundred yards away was a pair of kinchins.

They were feline creatures with the dark hair and red eyes of their fellow demonspawn.

But to Mavery, they’d always looked like disgruntled balls of fur.

Even full-grown kinchins, like the pair sitting a dozen yards away, were not much larger than bear cubs.

Their lower fangs, too large for their mouths, protruded over their upper lips.

Their whiskers and jowls drooped downward, giving their wide, squat faces looks of perpetual disappointment.