Simon had not noticed Aaric’s arrival, but after he saw the girl, he started to look for the young man. It only took a few dio find that he had bee a squire in the service of an older brother. That allowed him to line up his timeliween the levels a little better, but it also helped him regain i in what was going on iside world.

  Though he’d occasionally gotten involved in some of the minor mysteries ay power struggles that typified this strange pce, he’d mostly lost i iside world as he’d focused on ever more detailed handiwork and learned more plicated metalw teiques. Never in his life did Simon think that he would learn about the ins and outs of various forms of annealing and queng to get just the right properties from metal, but here he was. Worse, knowing what he knew now, he could see just how much there was to learn. It was a humbling thing for him to realize that one could spend a lifetime learning a skill and still not know all there was to know about it.

  Life is basically the opposite of a video game in that sense, he decided, which was funny because crafting, as it turned out, was addictive. It was even more addictive than learning, and it was as close to pying a good game as he’d found so far i, and he lost years of his life expl those delicate teiques.

  Familiar faces, though, that was new, and for the first time in a long time, it was enough to make him set down his hammers, files, and his ever-expanding sheaf of notes and poke around a bit iside world. As it turned out, very little had ged except for the women he saw at the evening meal.

  Sisters were not often seen for long because, as he’d noted previously, whisperers were used up rather quickly by the needs of the Unspoken. One could see them around the pound, it was just hard to see the same one for more than a few months or years. It took only a few missions to turn a sweet young girl into a e because they bled out their entire life just to stop a hedge wizard or two. That was a high price to pay to stop a man who was experimenting with things that the unspoken didn’t want ao know.

  He’d seewo of them talking in the courtyard on more than one occasion. While romance was forbidden by the Whitecloaks, it sometimes happened among the junior members of the order. Simon had never seen any harm in it, though he had seen members of both sexes punished very publiore than one occasion. He was sure that the two of them would get together and escape soon enough.

  However, Simoually decided to intervene anyway. It was just his nature at this point. He couldn’t simply trust that they would get away as they always had before; he might have already screwed that up in some small way. One day, when no one was looking, he pced a short tra the nature of the whisperer problem in young Aaric’s cell so that the boy could bee better acquainted with the costs of the cult he’d joined.

  The dot was something that Simon had read years before, and teically, it was secret from junior members of the order, but he didn’t care. He supposed that it wouldn’t be too hard to trace it ba, but that didn’t bother him too much, either.

  He’d long since prepared a self-destruct swit the form of a sharp-edged amulet that he wore. He hadn’t shared the design with any of his peers, and no runes were visible on its polished brass surface, but the thing would be more than suffit to blow his head off with a word of fire if he cut himself on it and bled a bit.

  He expected that to be almost as effective as the words he’d left for the youee to read. ‘The nature of magic is caustic to the soul,’ it read. ‘And the words of a whisperer are still magic, even though we might wish that they weren’t. They are a rare and powerful on Necessary to beat our foes, and it is through their sacrifice that the many will be saved by our foe and the damnable words of power they use for such ill purpose.’

  He ehe note by including the name of the man who’d written it, but Simon very much doubted that Aaric would know or care who Master Arvand Broodmark was, even if he was a storied leader of the order only fifty years ago. Still, he didn’t have a choice; after w in the library for so long, it was almost a pulsion.

  He obviously never asked Aaric if he’d read the thing, but the inquisitors never came looking for Simon, and the young man’s gaze had only beore furtive after that, which told Simohing they o know.

  Less than two weeks ter, the two of them tried to make their escape. Simon had taken to sitting iernoon light to warm his aging bones for the st few years when the weather was warm, and he worked on new ideas for spells and ons. He’d been at the Broken Tower long enough that no one doubted him or often even noted his presenymore. He wasn’t just a ghost to the broader world now; he was in this secret world as well.

  Some days, he would sit just outside the walls or in a grove slightly beyond that, and other times, he would sit atop the ruined keep not so far away from where the sentry kept watch over the surrounding area. On the day that Aarid Carelyn started to ride away just before su, while everyone else was at dinner, Simon was sitting up there as he had been every night for the st week.

  The guard had aowledged him when he’d arrived but tuned him out the rest of the time because, these days, Simon made for a remarkably poor versationalist. When he saw the two riding away on one horse, though, he asked Simon, “Do you think I should sound the arm?”

  Simon nodded vigorously as he poi the couple, but as soon as the sentry reached for the horn, Simon pushed the mahe wall. He sent him thirty feet to the ground without the slightest bit of guilt, and the man barely had time to scream before he hit the ground with a dull, wet thud. Even as so many other parts of Simon’s mind and skills had strengthened on this trip, he’d falleirely out of practice with ons, and his bat reflexes had been hopelessly dulled.

  So, while the sentry breathed his st in the dirt, Simon gathered his things. Then, he went to dinner and sat among the same people he always did while waiting for someoo sound the arm. That didn’t happen until shift ge almost an hour ter.

  Though the young lovers would doubtlessly be bmed for the death, he didn’t think they’d mind. It ossible that the unspoken would never even find them again with their curreart.

  That’s pretty much the best case, even if I have to solve that level agaiold himself while the rest of the pound scrambled like an agitated ant hill.

  It was only a few days after that event, whehing started to get back to normal that he decided he retty much doh this life.

  He hadn’t meant to stay here long enough to see things e full circle, but now that he had, it was something of a wake-up call for him. He’d stayed here for aire life and soaked up more knowledge about the Unspoken as well as the history of the world that they were “proteg” than he ever thought he would.

  He learned almost as much about how magic worked in this life as he had in all of his others bined, and he’d learned more about how the events of history fit together than he would have thought possible before this life. Well, the events of history in a very small portion of the world, he reminded himself.

  The white cloaks were a cer, but they were not yet a cer that had ed the world, and even if this life was not going to stick because he didn’t solve the level, he still didn’t pn oing them tio grow.

  He didn’t hate them precisely. Hate was too weak a word. Had the order merely been what it cimed to be on its face, then he would have hated them, but now that he khat those at the top of the pyramid hoarded power and used magic with impunity even as they tried to deny that same knowledge to the rest of the world, he loathed them.

  He only had firm evidehat anyone of any power used ented swords and amulets, but he suspected it was more than that. He’d seen gray-haired men look more youthful when they returned from a mission than they had when they went out, and he was quite certain that they weren’t above using the very spells they sought to suppress. After all, even though their entire order could see the auras, very few knew what they really signified.

  At this point, Simon was quite certain that Jack the Ripper might not be the darkest aura in a room. After all, if you did what you loved, it bluhe impact of even the worst behaviors as far as he’d seen.

  The only question was what to do about it. Simo weeks on that question while he worked on other projects and started getting his affairs in order. What’s the most awful, painful way I hurt these bastards? He poo himself for hour after hour and day after day whenever he wasn’t too busy.

  For a while, he sidered trying to open a giant portal into hell to swallow the entire base whole. It erfectly possible in a theoretical sense. In the end, it wasn’t even the fear of the havoc it might wre the wider world that stopped him; it was the logistical issues. The amount of work he’d have to do in public spaces would almost certainly get him caught.

  No, it o be something stealthier than that, he decided. It o be something small that doesn't require so much preparation.

  He gave a lot of thought to how he could kill the most people with the least effort before he finally decided on the Feast of the Asdance. Dropping the roof on the assembled grandees during the evening, when most or all of the most important people would be in attendanbsp;

  It wouldn’t be hard. He still had a few months, and he was sure he could create more than a few force wards on the main supports. If he still had a tongue, he could have severed all three with a greater word, but even runes of gold didn’t care freater words, so he would have to make the magics a bit more pabsp;

  Despite his creative pn, it didn’t seem to be enough to pay them back for all of the horrors they’d unleashed on the world. Still, enough or not, that was what Simon did. He told his supervisor he was w on a shield that might deflect arrows e stretches, proteg whole cadres from archers during battle, but really, he was creating shaped demolition charges.

  That wasn’t the hard part, though. The hard part was finding a way to activate all three of them at ohat took a little creativity. In the end, he was forced to create a firebomb between all three charges. It would detonate first, immoting everyone, including Simon. Then the heat of that fire would melt the lead in the force runes he’d desigriggering them. It was an ugly piece of work, but at least it would be dramatibsp;

  Well, I got more than I wanted from this life, he decided as he made his final preparations and reviewed his notes again so that he could try to remember as much as he could when his life started.

  He had s. Well, he had very few regrets, at least. The only thing he hadn’t gotten to do in this life was see Elthena, and the frequency with which he drew her fa his sketchbooks was steadily increasing. It was as clear an indicator as any that it was time to start over.