Anabeth’s first instinct activated itself. She said, “Oh, you must be mistaken. I am Bertha Van von Reigenfeld aus Nieder-Karnach Dürenschlag der Jüngeren—”

  Armas cut her off, “I admire the commitment. Van Rend said you always favored triple-compound noble constructions when improvising. She wasn’t wrong.”

  Anabeth went very still. I reached my inventory and grabbed a corn cob.

  “I don’t believe,” she said carefully, “that we’ve been properly introduced.”

  “No,” Armas said. “We haven’t. I’m Inspector Arna Armas from the Synod’s itinerant audit division. And an old acquaintance of your instructor.”

  “I… beg your pardon?”

  I took a few steps back.

  “I have heard of your work,” Armas went on conversationally. “Your early theoretical papers. Our unfortunate attempt to animate stone through emotional recursion.” She smiled wider. “Your… mischief.”

  Anabeth swallowed audibly.

  I took another few steps back, lifted my visor ever-so-slightly and started biting into my corn. I had learned, through long and painful experience, that situations like this were best observed with food already in hand. One should never watch free entertainment on an empty stomach.

  The corn was roasted. Lightly salted. Perfectly timed.

  Anabeth drew a careful breath. “Did Mrs. van Rend—” she began.

  “No,” Armas said.

  Anabeth stopped speaking.

  “She hasn’t told your father,” Armas continued, still conversational, still smiling. “Yet.”

  The silence that followed was exquisite.

  Armas went on, “I imagine both she and you will be in considerable trouble if the Lord von Silberthal discovers you’ve been bumbling about unsupervised with some—” she chanced a glance at me, “—entity.”

  I took another bite at the corn.

  Anabeth blurted, “This is—of course—a field excursion. The research implications alone are substantial. If successful, this could elevate metal thaumaturgy as we understand it by several decades.”

  “Then,” Armas continued, “you’ve submitted the appropriate excursion notice to your Wing of Metallurgic Studies?”

  “… There is no requirement to file during break,” Anabeth squeaked.

  “So this is an unsupervised, unregistered, cross-domain study involving experimental stone animation, anomalous entities, and Concord attention.” She smiled brightly. “Good news, then. You won’t mind if I inform Magister van Rend where you are, so she can assist you with the necessary oversight. And maybe we can bring your new companion back for the Lord’s appraisal.”

  I stopped eating the corn.

  Anabeth’s hands were clenched tightly in front of her. “Inspector, I—”

  “Now,” Armas said, “Miss von Silberthal—Anabeth—let us be candid. I am not here to interfere in your personal life, your academic ambition, or your ongoing habit of finding the sharpest possible edges of Synod policy and leaning on them.”

  That almost sounded fond.

  “I have heard,” Armas went on, “that you are an exceptional thaumaturge for your age. Careful, creative, and when necessary, discreet.”

  “Oh. It’s this thing again,” Anabeth murmured.

  “I require assistance,” Armas said. “If you are able to accomplish a task for me, then Magister van Rend will never be informed that you were in Branfield. Your mother will remain blissfully unaware of your… extracurricular research. You will also receive a personal commendation from me. As you know,” she continued mildly, “your mother is fighting for her seat within the Ministry. I imagine she would prefer not to explain another disappointment to her peers.”

  Anabeth stayed silent for a second too long, before asking, meekly, “What could I possibly do that official Synod personnel cannot?”

  “There is something the Concord is hiding,” Armas said. “The Order is increasingly dissatisfied with the Church’s… interpretations of doctrine. We suspect misclassification of artifacts and unauthorized custodianship. Possibly worse. We do not wish to alert them by deploying auditors in force, and I would not ask this of anyone less capable.”

  I took a cautious bite of corn.

  “As per usual,” she said, “a Synod inspector may only inspect documents voluntarily produced by the Church itself.”

  Anabeth echoed. “Only?”

  Armas nodded. “A long-standing agreement, codified and renewed every few years with much hand-wringing and mutual assurances of transparency.” Her mouth curved. “In practice, it allows the Concord to curate reality.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  That landed.

  “I will be shown what they wish me to see,” Armas continued. “Anything inconvenient will be sealed, misplaced, or quietly reclassified as devotional miscellany.”

  “And the Order tolerates this?” Anabeth asked.

  “For now. But they are growing impatient. Which is why I am here.” Armas reached into the inner pocket of her robe. What she withdrew was small enough to fit in her palm: a narrow band of dark metal, dull at first glance, etched with threads of copper and something silvery that refused to sit still in the light. It did not glow.

  “It is a Synod-issued auxiliary instrument,” Armas went on. “Officially, it does not exist. Unofficially, it has been used precisely three times in the last century.”

  She placed it gently on the table.

  “The Church will open its public archives to me,” Armas said. “In response, I will summon as many clerics, archivists, and custodians as protocol allows. They will be busy.”

  I stared at the object.

  Such a powerful item existed? With a tool like this, you didn’t need clearance. You didn’t need authority. You didn’t need to win an argument with a ward or a watcher or a sanctified threshold. You simply walked past them.

  Anabeth’s eyes tracked the band with the intensity of a starving scholar watching a sealed library door. She clasped her hands behind her back with visible effort—then, after a heartbeat, brought one hand up and pinched her own cheek. She whispered, mortified, “Inspector…”

  Armas asked, “Tell me—do you know how to perform Ferric Resonance Suppression?”

  Anabeth’s eyes dropped back to the artifact. Her voice came out quieter than before, reverent. “Yes.”

  “And your companion is a metal construct.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Armas slid the Veil a few inches closer to her. “Then you will cast the spell on him. He will move through the document chambers while I occupy every available cleric in the building. He will retrieve what I cannot be shown.”

  Anabeth swallowed.

  “I will tell you exactly what I need,” Armas went on. “If you succeed, the Veil is yours. And this as well.”

  She produced a second item and set it beside the first. This one was a thin, flat plate of pale alloy, etched with concentric sigils so fine they looked more like printing than engraving.

  Anabeth stared at both artifacts, utterly undone.

  “This,” she said, “is… profoundly unethical.”

  Armas smiled. “Yes. Which is why I chose you. You may have heard the stories surrounding the Concord. Nobody traffics in power and remains ethical, Miss von Silberthal. We are merely fighting fire with fire.”

  Anabeth didn’t answer. Her gaze remained locked on the artifacts, pupils dilated, fingers curled.

  “Besides,” Armas added, “your reputation precedes you. Won’t you do anything in pursuit of rare artifacts, Ms. Troublemaker?”

  She reached out before Anabeth could stop herself.

  The band slid across the table, and Armas closed Anabeth’s fingers around it.

  Anabeth sucked in a breath like she’d touched something sacred and illicit at the same time. Her hand trembled.

  Slowly, she looked away from the table, and at me.

  Then she stepped closer and pressed the artifact into my palm. Her eyes were wide, bright with calculation and fear and something dangerously close to joy. Her lower lip trembled. She didn’t speak aloud.

  Her lips moved, barely.

  We… shouldn’t, my lord.

  Yet, she seemed close to salivating as she stared at the artifacts.

  The words burned across my vision. Ceralis had known.

  The inspection assignment, the timing, the reward structure, and a skill designed to interface with metallic artifacts—this artifact—earned only after public compliance, after spectacle, after proving I would play my assigned role before being allowed to see behind the curtain.

  This was Saint Merin’s test.

  I looked at the band resting in my hand. Was this ethical? Or was I about to break into a holy archive because Ceralis told me to?

  Ceralis did say: Unlock Phase II: The Truth That Was Buried. There was more to this.

  I turned to Anabeth, who was holding her breath, then to Armas.

  “I will look at the documents,” I said. “And then, I will decide whether this deserves to continue.”