The Magistrate accepted the Treatise with both hands. He flipped through a few pages, enough to confirm the content, then nodded. “Thank you for retrieving it. The city appreciates efficiency.”

  He did not meet my eyes as he counted out the payment. I swept the coins into my pouch and inclined my head a fraction, and we soon parted ways.

  Some of these bounty quests were really easy, but I knew better than to trust that pattern. The last time I had believed a job’s description at face value, it had nearly killed me. A ‘routine retrieval’ had turned out to be an artifact that screamed when exposed to moonlight, drawing half a bandit company down on me within minutes. The patron had called it unusual.

  I still remembered running through the treeline with arrows biting into bark inches from my head. I had survived only by abandoning the prize and vanishing into terrain even desperation hesitated to follow.

  There were worse arrangements than bandits. Sometimes it was an escort—’just to the next town,’ they said—until the road passed through a gorge known for disappearances, or a ruin that had claimed better fighters than me. Cheap coin, expensive risk. And more than once, the person offering payment knew exactly how dangerous the task was and simply hoped their escort would die quietly enough to absolve them of responsibility.

  Quick money was a temptation. So was survival.

  I had learned not to wager my life on someone else’s omission.

  At least, some things did not lie to me.

  A precise accounting, rendered without interpretation or intent. I didn’t know how Ceralis knew the exact number, counted down to the last stamped sliver, and it unsettled me and reassured me all the same.

  It wasn’t just coins.

  Somewhere along the way, I had realized it had become a repository of sorts. When I had skimmed the Treatise on Lightning earlier, I had been trying to manually commit the sigils and progressions to memory—paring them down, prioritizing what I could afford to forget—before realizing I didn’t have to.

  The knowledge had already been recorded. The Aura Market had always listed the skills names, effects, optimizations, and theoretical ceilings. What it had never shown was the path. No mention of how one learned them without paying Aura, no lineage of practice, no method that didn’t end in a transaction.

  The Treatise filled that absence, at least for the few spells I’d managed to skim over.

  Unfortunately, many of them were not weapon-conductive.

  That much had been obvious even from the Aura Market listings. Lightning techniques that required free-form casting, layered emotional modulation, or sustained internal channeling—things a Knight was never meant to excel at.

  I had assumed that was the end of the matter.

  Ceralis disagreed.

  I read it twice.

  Ah. That was great. But I’d still be looking into weapon-conductive spells first. It would be far more efficient to start where Ceralis already had the scaffolding for, rather than forcing it to observe from the sidelines.

  I looked at the one weapon conductive spell that’d been mentioned in the book.

  Aetheric Stabilization, huh. That sounded like the kind of technique that sat quietly underneath everything else. More than that, it sounded like the first step toward actually feeling aether.

  If I learned Aetheric Stabilization the conventional way, I could absorb other skills without needing to redeem aura from the market.

  I focused on the technique name and willed Ceralis to surface anything it had filed under foundational.

  A new pane unfolded.

  Great. Even when I wanted to learn things by myself, there was a cost attached. I didn’t have 100 Aura. So much for clever loopholes.

  Behind me, Anabeth sat sideways across Silvermane’s back, legs swinging as she read with far too much interest from Metal-Clad Neighborhoods and Their Inhabitants: A Survey of Administrative Excellence.

  “So,” she said, without looking up, “we’re heading to the Mistveil Peaks next?”

  I nodded.

  She snapped the book shut a little too quickly. “Which means we’re leaving Aurelienth. Right? Right.” A beat. “Not that I have any objections, of course. Perfectly charming city. Very… structurally sound.”

  I said nothing.

  I could imagine her grin as she spoke, “I mean, it’s not as if I’m eager to leave, or worried about lingering in one place too long, or concerned that certain administrators might suddenly remember my name. But really, a change of scenery is excellent for a journeyman’s development. Broadens the mind. Encourages growth. Avoids… stagnation.”

  I hadn’t been particularly curious before. Everyone carried a past; Anabeth’s had always felt noisy but ultimately irrelevant. Unfortunately for her, that performance had been atrocious, and now I cared. Curiosity, once ignited, was difficult to extinguish.

  “Enough,” I said. “You will tell me now. Why are you afraid of Aurelienth?”

  “I am not, Sir! Whatever gives you the impression?” Her voice rose by half a pitch. “It’s just… I’m but an innocent country girl, you see. It’s my first time in a big town like this, ever. So, naturally, I am a bit overwhelmed, that’s all. I don’t even know the name of a single person here.” I didn’t know why she lied. She literally announced she was from Aurelienth the other day.

  A booming announcement rang out behind us, “Make way for Young Master von Silberthal!”

  Anabeth yelped. “Eeeek!” She snatched her shawl and buried her face in it, muffling the squeak of panic. Her legs swung wildly from Silvermane’s back as she tried to disappear into the fabric like a very conspicuous hedgehog.

  I turned my head, curious despite myself. The street opened up to something I’d only ever seen once in my life: a vehicle that moved without horses, wheels rolling over the cobblestones as if it had a mind of its own. A driver sat inside, gripping a curved, circular handle mounted before him, etched with tiny glowing glyphs and lines of pulsing aether. The contraption seemed to respond to his touch alone, gliding forward with uncanny smoothness.

  That was a Thaumachine.

  Only the wealthiest of the wealthy could own such a thing. Its design, its glow, the way it moved without draft animals—it was unlike anything meant for ordinary travel. I had seen one exactly once before, when accompanying Sir Roland on a personal guard mission for some ridiculously wealthy household. It was rare, expensive, and entirely impractical for anyone who wasn’t flaunting their wealth, as it ran on aethercaches, which, as Anabeth had already told me, cost ten horses for a single item.

  She leaned forward, poking my back. “Ah! A wealthy household I’ve never seen before! Hurry, we should step aside… to that dark alley over there, to make room for them!”

  I asked. “Is your last name von Silberthal?”

  She let out a high-pitched laugh. “Of course not! I have never heard of that name in my life. I—I can’t even pronounce ‘von Subaru’!”

  At that exact moment, another voice—female this time—rang out from the street, “Is that Young Lady Anabeth?”

  Yup. Her last name was definitely von Silberthal. You didn’t name someone von Silberthal unless you wanted the world to hear money in it. It was the kind of name that appeared on a gate plaque in embossed steel and contracts written in ink that never faded. Nobody with that name was an ‘innocent country girl.’

  Anabeth let out a tinier, squeakier, “Eek!” Then she coughed into her hands. “Oh! Sir Knight... you have such—such magnificent horse-riding skills! It is truly high time you make use of your talents and get us moving!”

  “And why should I?”

  “Just run! They'll have our heads! Or at least put you on a Wanted list. Which would be… uh… very inconvenient for you! Think about the unwanted attention!”

  Yeah… that gets me running alright.

  I swung around and saw that a woman was literally flying toward us, hovering above the cobblestones with hands glowing in crackling green aetheric energy. Her robes fluttered violently in the wind, and her eyes were fixed on Anabeth’s back with an energy that screamed ‘murder’. “Halt it right there, stranger! Let me see the woman—”

  Anabeth clutched my arm, wide-eyed. “Ah! Move now, Sir!”

  Say no more. I kicked Silvermane into motion.