A Traitor in Skyhold: Mage Errant Book 3 by John Bierce

Author:John Bierce [Bierce, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Published: 2019-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

After they explained what had happened on their end to Alustin, he spent several minutes examining the spellbook.

“It felt just like trying to scry into a labyrinth,” Alustin said. “It’s got to be a property of the labyrinth stone, not the aether crystal. Not that there’s much difference now, but…”

Sabae coughed pointedly.

“Right, you were saying why you thought Headmaster Tarik was innocent,” Alustin said. He sat down next to Godrick on Hugh’s bed. Godrick scooted over to give him a little more room.

Sabae rolled her eyes again. Godrick was fairly sure she was going to sprain them at this rate.

“I’ve spent the last few weeks painstakingly going over attendance lists and minutes for every leaked secret you all know about that you were willing to share with us,” Sabae said. “This all, by the way, would have been much, much easier if you’d been willing to share a little more.”

Alustin opened his mouth to say something, but Sabae held up her hand to forestall him. “I know, I know, we’re not cleared for that sort of thing as apprentices.”

“Anyhow,” she continued. “I just created a chart of how frequently councilors attended meetings where these secrets were discussed, and what I found was that Headmaster Tarik’s attendance was far, far less frequent than any of the others at these meetings. I wasn’t able to conclusively show that she missed any of the secrets entirely, but many of the meetings in questions had only the most rudimentary mentions of the leaked information. So I suppose I don’t have absolute confirmation it wasn’t her, but it’s pretty telling.”

Alustin got off the bed and walked over to her. “May I see your results?”

He spent several minutes reading through her notes and examining her charts, and then nodded. “You did a good job on this. You even spotted a handful of significant meetings we missed. Good work.”

Sabae stared at him for a moment, then narrowed her eyes. “You knew,” she said. “You’ve known all along that it wasn’t Tarik and you didn’t tell us. So much for our contributions mattering, then.”

“We only figured it out a couple months ago,” Alustin protested. “And while I’ve hardly kept it a secret that I consider this a training exercise for you, I also consider you part of a legitimate operation here. You’re not the only investigators on the case we haven’t told— we actually have quite a few people still looking into Tarik.”

“That seems like a waste,” Talia said.

“Better safe than sorry,” Alustin countered. “We can’t risk being wrong about a suspect when the stakes are this high. It would take remarkably little to pull her back into being a suspect again.”

“Isn’t it risky having this many people in on the investigation?” Sabae asked. “Even if there’s only one traitor on the Council…”

Alustin nodded. “There almost certainly are other traitors in Skyhold as well. Bakori’s magic can’t penetrate into the Grand Library, though, and Kanderon has personally inspected most of the librarians for his influence. We think our security is good enough to look for more conventional traitors.

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