Page 105 of A Tower of Half-Truths
“We can take a break—”
“No, let’s press on,” Alain said, “at a moreleisurelypace, if you don’t mind.”
She smiled. “Of course.”
Side by side, they continued onward. Mavery’s fingers itched to close the small distance between them and take his hand. They’d only passed a handful of other people strolling along the trail, and they were now completely alone, but she kept her hands firmly at her sides. She’d crossed enough boundaries as of late: staying at Alain’s apartment, sharing his bed. Though she’d rectified the latter, she’d made no progress yet on the former. And now, coming to this somewhat remote forest had been her idea.
Workwas the reason for this excursion. So, she shifted her focus to searching for arcane resonances—potential anchors hidden among the underbrush—and alchemical ingredients that wereeasier to spot. Persilweed grew rampant here, as it did wherever there was a bit of soil and a hint of sunlight, but she was hoping to find something more noteworthy. A few minutes down the path, she stopped to point out a cluster of bushes at the center of a copse.
“I think those are drottberries,” she said. “That’s odd. I figured they’d be deeper in the forest than this.”
She approached the copse at a light jog.
“We hardly have time for foraging,” Alain called. “We only have a few hours of daylight remaining.”
Mavery scoffed. “And whose fault is that?Youwere the one who insisted on running errands all morning, then took forever getting ready. Besides, I’ve noticed your stores are running low.”
She slung off her pack and leaned over a bush to examine the vibrant red berries. Behind her, Alain sighed, then his footsteps and the thud of his staff grew closer.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “We might as well make the most of this trip, though I can’t say I have any need for drottberries.”
“Theycouldbe drottberries,” she said, “or they could be baneberries. It’s always hard to tell the difference.”
“So, we will either reveal our deepest, darkest secrets—or we will suffer hallucinations and excruciating pain for hours before finally succumbing to death.” He chuckled. “I can’t say I’m willing to take that particular gamble.”
Mavery opened her pack and peered inside, though the ambient light was too dim for her to differentiate anything inside the iridescent void. That was the downside of the Transmutation spell. She reached the entire length of her arm, from fingertips to armpit, inside the pack and fished around blindly. Her fingers brushed against paper, and she pulled out her Compendium. She put her pack aside and began flipping through the bundle of pages.
“I know I have something in here somewhere…”
Alain stepped closer until he was behind her shoulder.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“I call this my Compendium of Knowledge. I can’t believe I’ve never had a chance to show you until now. Ah! Here we are.”
She turned to a section containing pages from an herbalist’sfield guide she’d pilfered over a decade ago. The paper was exceptionally worn, her notes in the margins so smudged they were almost indecipherable.
“Five-pointed leaves.” She closed the Compendium with a sigh. “Baneberries.”
“A shame,” Alain said, “though I’m more interested in that book of yours.”
She handed it over, then watched him slowly flip through the collection of mismatched pages. She appreciated his care, but the book only appearedmore delicate than it actually was. The pages were bound together with thick, high-quality thread, and it had so far managed to withstand the test of time—and being jostled around in her pack.
“I started with some of my first-year textbooks from Atterdell,” she said. “I then added other books I picked up in my, er, travels.”
He raised a brow. “I presume the majority of them weren’t purchased from a bookshop.”
“You know me,” Mavery said with a shrug. “I would cut out chapters and sections, based on what interested me the most at the time. What you see now is an effort two decades in the making.”
Alain blanched. “Stealing books is one thing, butdefilingthem?”
She rolled her eyes. “They’re far more useful in this state than collecting dust in some noble bastard’s library. And it’s not as though I had any better options. Until yesterday, my pack wasn’t equipped with a Transmutation spell. I couldn’t haul an entire library along with me.”
As Alain continued skimming through the Compendium, Mavery caught a quirk of his eyebrows, a softening of his eyes, a slight upturn of his lips. His smile widened when he reached the most recent additions: the incantations he’d written during her Etherean lessons.
“This is remarkable,” he said. “All this time, you’ve been curating a miniature library, like being your very own arcanist.”
“I shouldn’t have to.” Mavery shook her head. “All this time, I’ve wondered why this knowledge is so easy for wizards and thewealthy to acquire, yet near impossible for everyone else.”
