After that enter, Simon waited for the other shoe to drop for weeks. Even as he did, he still went through the motions, and carried on with business as usual. Well, he did his best to, at least. For a while, he was still jumping at his own shadows whenever a scroll fell off a shelf or a beggar he hadn’t noticed accosted him oreet for a few coppers.

  That’s probably a good thing, though, he tried to vince himself. If I’m being watched, this is the sort of behavior that they’d want to see. It would take a much harder man than Ennis to shake off that kind of ued visit.

  Even after the fear began fading, though, the fusion and curiosity lingered. He took measures to protect himself anyway. He’d been staying at the inn for too long. He’d growo its easy meals and the habit of ing home to a pce that was already warm.

  If people were watg him, though, and he was supposed to be afraid, or worse, hiding something, he should be making it harder for them. So, he used some of his growing savings to rent a small pce that was closer to the library on the rickety third floor of an old building, and he made a point to be seen carrying notes home almost every night.

  “Let them worry about what I might have found,” he told himself the ime he thought he was being followed.

  Simon was sure that the more iing he made himself to the white coats, the more likely he was to get a sed visit from them. However, as the weeks passed and his cryptiotes swelled, that certainty began to wane.

  He’d started doing all sorts of paranoid things like leaving small stones by the doors and shutters as well as leaving papers in very specific orders. Despite all of those efforts, he’d never one back to find that any of those things had been disturbed.

  While he was initially ahat they’d intruded on his life on that first visit, slowly but surely, he grew more ahat they didn’t seem to be watg him after that. If I ’t cast spells, then there's o keep tabs on me, huh? He thought to himself as he tinued his research. In that area, at least, he was making progress.

  The haystacks were fairly obvious, at least. They were the city library that he’d spent so much time ihe st year, along with a few of the private colles he’d gained access to over that time.

  The needles he was supposed to be seeking out, though. That was harder. They were clues of some sort, probably, but clues about what? Where were they hiding, and how would he know when he’d found them?

  Simon asked himself that question with every new book he read. He looked for hidden meanings in the words and the symbols, checked the illuminated portions of the text for coded messages, and looked in the illustrations for details that most might miss. He was always searg for more. What that more was, he wasly sure.

  When he’d inally decided what he was going to do with this life, he’d always hoped that he’d stumbled upon a few words of power that he didn’t already know. The white cloaks had obviously thought of that, though. Given how easy it was for witches and warlocks to pass their powers to each other, they’d obviously goo great lengths to make sure that didn’t happen.

  Months passed like that, and though he still sold maps when he o and attended bas when the opportunity would e up, there was no joy in it. Where once he’d ehe fancy food and the ce to listen to the rumors of the day with those of importan the city, he now only wondered who might be watg him at the diables.

  That was just as well because the longer he stayed in this city, the less of an oddity he became. Eventually, the invitations he received to be shown off as one slowly trickled to a halt. Should his mythical patron arrive in town to sy some monsters, he was sure that trend would quickly reverse, but that was never actually going to happen.

  Eventually, he eveired to track down the identities of the men who had wayid him. He’d only seen one of their faces clearly enough through the shadows of their cloak, but he was fident that he could reize their voices if heard them again.

  What was he supposed to do with that information, though? Kidnap them and torture the truth out of them? It was a fun idea, but it was hardly his style. Even his least favorite, Raithwaite, barely jured up that level of bloodlust at this point.

  The st thing that Simon ever wao be was a vampire. However, right now, he had to admit that the strange pulsion power he’d endured would e in handy at times like this.

  Still, eventually, he lost i ihose pursuits as he pursued his blind treasure hunt with more and more iy. There are clues in these books, and I’m going to find them, he told himself. Eventually, it was all he lived for. Days could pass by in the blink of an eye as he pored through tomes, cross-refereng them against each other in a search for some hidden meaning beyond what they actually said.

  Not even actual refereo men who cimed to have experienced doppelgangers, as was discussed iemptation of Saint Karell, would get as muterest as a line like, ‘a secret that ot be spoken,’ or ‘victory was born on white wings that day.’ It got to the point where he started to feel like a spiracy theorist.

  Though he doubted that every one of those references art of a secret society, the longer he studied the history of the region, the more he could see fingerprints left by some hidden hand. Sloppy record-keeping was ohing, but when of ten books left out a name or two, and only one included them, that just meant it hadn’t been purged yet.

  During the winter, his favorite clue was when the handwriting that a book was copied in suddenly ged. That was doubly true when it ged back to the inal a page or two ter. It was a clear indicator that something had been removed, but often, it was impossible to say what that something had been.

  In rare cases, he was able to find two copies of the same book from different libraries with differing page ts. Sometimes, this addressed his s. In almost every case, it turned out to be a hero doing some great deed that might have used magic. The text never said, ‘and then he smote the beast with a word of greater fire,’ but the iable rept text usually read something like, ‘Then with white wings and the strength of the divine he slew the beast with his own two hands.’

  Women seemed to get the worst of this treatment, and almost every heroian was carefully removed from the records. Often as not, she was repced by an effeminate-looking mahe illustrations were altered.

  “Man, these guys really hate witches,” Simon muttered as he made note of Kanara, another woman who no longer existed acc to the annals of history.

  Simon sometimes wondered how his efforts would be felt by history, but that i intensified as he slowly made a list of people eared to have been scrubbed out of the official narrative. Not that anyone cared. Almost two years after his arrival, people stopped notig him. He was no longer a y but a fixture. Sometimes, one of the other scribblers in the library might ask him how his research was ing, but Simon had little to tell them beyond, “The problem seems intractable, but in time I’ll figure something out.”

  He wasn’t talking about his Patron anymore, of course, but they didn’t o know that. Instead, the questions in his mind about the Unspoken multiplied. He could see what they were doing on every level now; he could even guess why. How, though, was more of an opeion.

  They didn’t seem to be a religious order in that he found their breadcrumbs reted to several gods and goddesses. They didly seem to be royalty, though, either.

  As near as he could tell, history and schorship were far less importahan they had been oh. He hadn’t even been in this town for two years, and he felt like he’d read half of the libraries he had access to at this point. Well, skimmed, at least, he corrected himself mentally.

  His point still stood, though. Very little of what he read was actual schorship. Instead, most books were either devoted to glorifying some King or Duke who had no doubt paid for their writing, or they were religious texts that were as much fi as they were history.

  It was in thious texts that Simon finally found his first real loose thread. Religion wasn’t something he’d given a lot of thought to sining to this world. That was rgely because he found out that Hedes wasn’t worshiped as a Goddess. No one had heard of her, though he supposed that it ossible that if he brought her up to the demon, it might know her name.

  Everyone else, though, mostly worshiped whoever they wanted iemples and churches, and those names rgely varied by region and try. In Ionia, one god was responsible fhtning and thuorms, but in Brin, it was airely different woman who was the bringer of rains. The former was a war god, while the tter was the goddess of spring. It was flig enough that he felt sure in his decision that the mortals without magic had no idea what they were talking about.

  However, sihe religions were, by and rge, the keepers of history, he still had to read their books. That hen he was doing a read-through of the saints of Hypaltia, who was the goddess of winter in this region but the goddess of light and further north, he took hat there was no Saint Geregus listed.

  That shouldn’t have been important, but it was because Simon was sure he’d seen refereo that saint listed a dozen times in random pces. He was sure because the man ofte by another oo: the Silent Saint.

  Sure that su ht couldn’t be correct, Simohrough another volume by a different author and another after that. The story repeated itself. Those works were not written by any of the relevant religions, but that only intrigued him more because he could go back through his notes and find many pces where victory had been associated with this ent saint.

  “This is the hint I’ve been waiting for,” he told himself, smiling as he smmed the book shut and shelved it.

  He didn’t think it likely that the church had edited one of their own heroes out of existence. Instead, after reviewing his notes on the subject, Simon decided that it was far more likely that the saint was yet aand-in for the white robes. This rabbit hole went deeper than doves, though. On occasion, after great victories, certain rituals would sometimes be discussed, and even what turned out to be a e day was mentioned.

  This, Simon decided at long st, was the way in, at least for him. He was sure that an anization like the Unspoken had many ways to recruit. He was certain that her Aarior Carelyn had been big readers. He wasn’t even sure they were literate at all, beyond the very basics. The day iion was ing up, and he would be ready.