To his surprise, Arvid found both the Code and the material from Kolobia fascinating. What he was learning about the history of the Fellowship, what he saw in the Code of Gird and the papers from the distant stronghold, all showed Gird the founder to be very different from the image he’d had in his mind for years. Not, for one thing, the insufferably perfect model farmer he’d been told about and not a dull clod, either, from the increasing sophistication of the Code of Gird. He learned that Luap’s version of Gird’s life hadn’t pleased some of his followers—including Gird’s daughter. Arvid hadn’t thought of Gird as having a daughter, and he wondered what she’d looked like. And Gird had had other children, who disappeared in the war that made him famous.

Luap, Arvid decided after delving into his writings, was an idiot. He took that opinion to the senior scribe, Doullan. “Why did Gird put up with him?” he asked. “Look at this letter—”

“I’ve seen it.” Doullan rubbed a hand over his bald head. “Arvid, you write a beautiful hand, but you’re young in the Fellowship. Luap was revered for years—”

“And he’s so hungry for power, I can smell it all these hundreds since.”

“What makes you so sure?”

What made him sure was a lifetime in the Thieves’ Guild, where ambition was controlled only by force … as his own had been and as he had controlled others. But the Marshal-General had asked him not to discuss his background. “Experience,” he said blandly. “I’ve run across that type before.”

“You may be right,” Doullan said. “I’ve never been out of Fin Panir, let alone Fintha. Marshal-General tells me people are different other places. It’s just—growing up, we were told Luap was Gird’s best friend and helper. And wrote down all the Code, when it was first made. I suppose that’s why I identified with him.”

Arvid blinked. The old scribe, gentle and unassuming, was nothing like the man whose hunger for renown blazed through his writings. “I understand why you admire him,” he said, easing his shoulders. “If I had been born here—had become a scribe first—I’m sure I would, too.”

“You know they saw him—well, some kind of figure of him—out in the west,” Doullan went on. “Like a painting in smoke, is the way High Marshal described it, taller than a man … blue and white robes, the old-fashioned symbol on a chain, holding a sword.”

“A wraith? Phantom?”

“He wasn’t sure. At least, he never said more about it. But they knew it was Luap, or a … something meant to be like Luap. And then it blew away on the wind and never came back.”