Ishtara Lienne's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Ishatra Leinne locked her tea shop before dawn, though she meant to open a school inside it. Behind the painted teapots and striped awnings, she had planned a hidden order to teach the forbidden rites the temple burned. Now she pulled the curtains and swept ash over the sign. A stranger had come three nights running, asking after a red-haired woman with a scarred eye. Aldric Vane was hunting her. She had ruined him years ago with a false accusation, and he had learned her name at last. She took only two things: a leather ledger stolen from the temple undercroft, and a long sword with a purple stone in its guard. The ledger held the accounts that proved her old crime. The sword, men said, showed truth to whoever raised it. She wrapped both in cloth and left through the back. The smuggler's cabin sat deep in the frost woods, timber walls white with snow. Cedric Ashford opened the door before she knocked. He had been her acolyte once, a highborn orphan she taught to read the old verses. Now his beard was tangled and his cloak patched. He looked at her the way a man looks at an unpaid debt come to collect. "You said I'd never have to repay you," he said. "I lied," she answered. "Let me in." He stepped aside. Inside, a fire cracked. She set the ledger on the table and told him plainly. Aldric had proof of her guilt. If he reached the temple first, he would clear his name and brand her a fraud. No one follows a fraud. Her order would die before its first lesson. "So run," Cedric said. "Burn the book." "Burning it saves me nothing." She opened the ledger to the marked page. Her own hand had recorded the bribes that framed Aldric. But two lines below, written in another's hand, was the name of the man who had paid her. A temple elder. The one who truly wanted Aldric gone. "I was only the knife. This is the arm that swung me." Cedric read it twice. "You'd trade your own guilt for his?" "I'd trade a small crime for a larger one." She drew the sword. The purple stone lit, and the runes along the blade glowed cold. Whoever read them would know the words were true. "Aldric wants the truth. I'll give him more of it than he came for. He'll turn on the elder, not me. And a woman who exposed a corrupt priest is worth following." Cedric took the sword to the door. His route crossed Aldric's path within a day. "If this is a lie," he said, "I'll leave you in the snow." "It isn't." She meant it. He left. The truth was loose now, and she could not call it back. Aldric would come. She only hoped he came asking who, not why.