In the end, Charity got her way, and the pair of them were brought down the twisting brick pathway to the family coach. It had seen better days; the once-sable black of its paint had faded to charcoal.

  He had never noticed her family's heraldry before: two eagles, sharing an olive branch. He wasn't sure what it meant.

  The carriage was quicker than riding on horseback, probably because there were two horses, and possibly because they weren't being sat upon. It was quieter, too, with the doors closed. No wind. For whatever reason, this felt unnatural to Dalliance, to travel with no breeze from the movement.

  Forthrightly sat in the corner of the carriage, a leather-bound book in his hand with the six symbols of the six divines on the spine. She glanced at the top of the book, to the bookmark, and drew Dalliance's attention to it as well. The guardsman was nearly finished with it.

  "It's like this all the time," she said, her tone not quite complaining.

  "The Young Miss is very opinionated," the armsman said. "I find it prudent to prepare myself to evaluate what she is saying."

  "We get along famously," she said.

  "So, what are you planning on reading?" Dalliance asked. "Where are you going to look?"

  "Oh, I shall be looking for all the treatises on the System I can find," she replied. "What about you?"

  Dalliance glanced at their armsman, then back at Charity. This would be telling. He had learned that he could keep his exam notes in his pocket and reference them without ever taking them out. In fact, he could glean the contents of ten minutes' reading while looking completely elsewhere, although it didn't seem to transfer everything perfectly.

  First up, he decided, I'll just go around and look for titles, appendices, and chapter contents. Scan them for assorted keywords, perhaps, to find what I'm looking for.

  It was the start of a thought, breaking down a little at the end, but still a great start.

  I'm going to [Predict] my way to a book on spells

  "I’ve spent a great deal of time there," Charity said idly. "A great deal of time. Especially after I discovered the Temple's count of the gods was wrong. It made me question all their conclusions." She paused, her gaze distant. "That, and . . . it was a way to remember my mom."

  "And so far, what are your conclusions?" he asked.

  "Well . . . " She took a breath, gathering her thoughts. "That if we can posit the existence of a good god, we must also posit the potential for a bad one. If there were a god of murder, for instance, he might tell his followers to murder, but that would not make murder a 'good' act. So it follows that divinity and goodness are separate things. A good god is good because they are good, not simply because they are a god."

  She looked at him, her blue eyes intense. "And if that's true, it follows that worship isn't automatically the right thing to do."

  "Then why do you do it?" Dalliance asked, genuinely interested. It felt odd to speak in front of the guard so openly: the Topper-turned-armsman must be thirty—or more—and Dalliance felt absurd addressing him so boldly. And yet, Dalliance was a mage now, and had to be mindful of his new station.

  He would be, anyway, while someone whose opinion mattered watched.

  Charity's confidence seemed to waver for a moment. "I . . . don't have a simple answer for that." She glanced over at her guard. Forthrightly just offered a slight, almost imperceptible shrug.

  "I have my own thoughts," the armsman said, his voice a low rumble. "But this is the type of thing you decide for yourself, I think."

  And so they passed the ride in enjoyable conversation. Charity, secure in his willingness to listen, expanding upon her beliefs, and Dalliance, trying his best to play devil's advocate, adopting what he could approximate of the jaded, analytical tone of Mister Best.

  The Pax Deorum, 'peace of the gods', was an imperial mandate to not get the empire smitten due to a citizen's failure to do their prayers. It was the law. And . . . on the practical side of things, if you didn't appease the gods, you'd know about it from things failing to work out for you. Or, possibly. There was the open question of whether the average person's orthopraxy was sufficient to net them any divine favor, regardless, so what was the point?

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Dalliance thought it sounded like extortion. Forthrightly snorting indecorously at the statement, and Charity proved the folly of his heretical statement through a spirited attempt to explain the idea of 'sovereignty' to Dalliance, who thought the idea itself was rubbish, for the remainder of the ride.

  When they pulled up on Lapidarium Place, outside the Archive, Forthrightly seemed grateful for the break in conversation and lingered a moment speaking to the driver.

  "We can’t be long," Forthrightly cautioned her as they mounted the steps, Charity descending first. "Your father would not want you traveling after dark."

  She agreed without turning, her focus elsewhere. The Archive stretched out before them, and this time with a goal she set off at once. Dalliance tarried a moment with her guard, who tolerantly answered that while one can peruse as one likes, archive books are impossible to remove from its grounds. Curiosity satisfied, he set about his own search.

  In the end, she only grabbed two books. Dalliance, meanwhile, continued to feel rather awed as they perambulated down the long aisles between the bookshelves. He wasn't just looking for one particularly good book; he was amazed to discover whole categories dedicated to subjects he had only heard the names of. He followed a path of inquiry all about smithing, then different sorts of rock carving techniques, and the histories of the Four Kings. He gleaned details of how their council had selected the first among equals as Emperor, a seat the Chancellor now guarded.

  Eventually, he found his first books on spells.

  That is, he found his first books about spells, much to his disappointment and chagrin. The books tended to fall into one of two broad categories, both of which ruined his dream of finding a perfect spell to simply read off the page.

  The first category described specific spells as used by famous mages, but they were historical accounts of mages, not instruction manuals. He learned that spells had several parts, each of which modified the others, and that their casting was often dependent on specific conditions, such as sight, touch, or sympathetic connections like possessing a piece of someone's handwriting, but primarily due to learning things like Maxim Knight’s Captain Robustive had been the first to cast, for example, [Shardquake]. He also learned that [Werewind] was not a common spell, and while several texts recommended it, its knowledge was highly restricted, as it was deemed ‘rare’.

  The best libraries for actual spells, he discovered, were elsewhere.

  The second category of books was even more frustrating. They were little more than catalogues, referencing spells like the ‘Early's Arc’ or ‘Steelwind Aegis,’ but doing nothing more than specifying which family, in this case, the Earlys, possessed such spells in their private grimoires, and mentioning notable uses. The Aegis had been used to kneecap a centaur hero of the Forest Folk. The Arc had brought down a roc in the early days of the empire.

  If he wanted spells, he would have to go through people he had no current access to. Barring the Earlys, of course, but he didn't expect Effluvia would take kindly to being asked to give up her family secrets.

  Or her parents.

  In terms of theory it was a useful exercise: he discovered that wind magi tended to go for the same few fallback spell types, which meant he should probably do likewise: smother, sever, shield, for up close, fogs and fumes for distance, flight or similar for utility, and messenger spells like [Whisper], which there WAS a copy of.

  Reading it, he felt the spell’s shape, but failed his first cast of it. Still, it was encouraging.

  So was what he learned about [Prediction]. In fact, it by itself proved more than worth the trip. This faerie gift, he read, was known to co-exist with classes such as [Arcane Archer] and was regularly used by the dark Fae. Known counters: [Telepathy], [Prediction], . . . . A book on the demi-human races rapidly absorbed all of his focus. He sat down in a chair, thinking, I will be right back to look for other books, and did not do so. For her part, neither did Charity.

  After several hours of reading, Charity looked up from her own text and told him thoughtfully, "Charm is the remedy for overthought. Potentially a worthwhile investment, though it makes one pliant. You won't mind that, though: Spirit makes one obstinate."

  He admitted the trait preceded his investment, to her amusement.

  No matter what he chose, he'd be damned whether he did or didn't.

  He also learned that mana wasn't a single thing, but a discrete entity composed of the combined aspects of the world: Fire, Water, Light, and so forth. But the mana of the world, unlike the gods, did not understand humans. This, the text argued, is why the gods made the human soul, a divine mana construct to enable humans to contain and control mana, as they could not have otherwise. The soul was thus also the premier source of divine-aspected mana.

  Charity had been following his discoveries in a vague, academic fashion, but she sat up straight at his last comment.

  "'Source of divine mana'?" she repeated, her voice sharp with disbelief.

  "Well," Dalliance protested, "I don't know that they have to take the soul first."

  It was with a great deal to think about that Dalliance and Charity finally left the archives, and when the carriage dropped him at the Best estate, it was nearly dark.