For his plan to work, Simon needed only four things, and he already had two of them. The first was a place to read, and the second was the names of a few books that he wanted to read. Now, all he had to do was forge a permission slip and then get an opportunity. That last one would be easy, at least for now. Minder Dollen sent Simon out frequently enough now that he was in real danger of finding out what happened to those who were deemed irredeemable, and Simon vowed to make sure that didn’t happen.

Still, he didn’t rush things so much that he would miss this opportunity. Instead, he spent a whole morning diligently forging a library request from Magi Hajalna. He’d helped her to lug heavy boxes related to some experiment she was working on, so he knew her signature. Today, whether she knew it or not, she was asking to borrow The Motions of Magecraft and A Lexicon on Subtle Meanings.

Simon had picked out both of the books based on their titles on his last trip to the library, and though he knew nothing about what they actually contained, their names seemed clear enough. While he was there, he would pick out a couple more names in the same way in case he had the chance to do this again, but truthfully, he already felt like he was pushing his luck with this stunt.

Every time you do this is a time you risk getting caught, he reminded himself as his minder sent him off on an errand that amounted to little more than hauling and sweating for a Magi he didn’t recognize. That was fine. Suffering was the lot in life for an acolyte, and that didn't bother him. He only feared that one of these days, one of these preening mages was going to try to perv on him at some point. Then he was going to have to blow his cover by transforming them from a human to a fine paste.

That didn’t happen today, though, thankfully. Instead, after he was dismissed, instead of going back to the scriptorium, he went to the library, and then when the librarian gave him the books he requested without batting an eye, he quickly retreated to the bloodstained room on the second floor of the now vacant building on the south side of the Pyramid of Lesser Miracles that would probably give anyone else nightmares.

I wonder if they ever accidentally make things like the demon seed or the frost orb here? He wondered as he took the stairs two at a time once he was off the street.

Simon didn’t care about old violence. He was barely afraid of new violence, but it did make him curious. His hands were shaking with excitement, not fear when he sat down beneath the window where the light was good, but no one would be able to see him, so he popped the seal off of the first book.

Even though he knew nothing would happen, part of him feared that some alarm would sound at that, like a shopper who hadn’t paid for their order. His mind couldn’t help but imagine what it would look like for someone to shout a word of greater nullification over a bullhorn as a medieval swat team broke down the door to arrest him.

That was enough to make Simon smile as he started to leaf through the new book, but he suppressed the laugh. He’d chosen the lexicon first because he could really only do this for an hour or two, and he believed that it was likely to have less interesting information than the guide to gestural magic. Simon was completely wrong on that front.

The thing contained the better part of a chapter on most of the words he knew, discussing a variety of meanings. Most of those he knew, but some of them he didn’t. A quick look revealed that the only words he knew that it had omitted were the words for greater and the words for soul. That seemed to be a somewhat intentional oversight to him.

I wonder how many of the books here are censored here? He asked himself. Is there anything that the unspoken do that these guys don’t?

He frequently compared the two, but that was because they were the only two organizations in this world that had this much overlap. The same was probably true of corporations or government agencies back on Earth, but Simon hadn’t known much about either of those things in his life, and even the memories that he thought he remembered secondhand from movies were more than a little blurry now.

That wasn’t important, though. What was important was that he’d finally found new words! Over Simon’s fortyish lives, he’d found only sixteen words of power. He’d found a couple scattered here and there, a couple in evil grimoires, and most of the rest during his time with the White Cloaks. He hadn’t expected to find many more after that, but in this book, there were two more for him to feast his eyes upon.

The first was Farzhel. It was a word to alter other words only if this text was to be believed. It wasn’t meant to be used when casting a spell but in response to a spell or an ongoing effect. Simon saw the uses even before the book had finished explaining them to him.

It’s not a spell to change what I’m casting, he thought, stunned. Almost all words do that already. It's a spell to alter spells that are already in existence. In his mind, he envisioned it as a sort of counterspell, able to redirect lightning or fire. I might even be able to siphon off someone's spell back to pure life energy, he realized.

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Such a word would take a lot of careful experimentation and practice, of course, but it seemed very versatile. The other one seemed almost as flexible but a bit more evil, given how he knew it was probably meant to be used.

Weylera was the second word he found that he hadn’t heard before, and from the moment he whispered it aloud, he felt it burn into his soul with all of the others. This one seemed less useful than many others he knew, but Simon was experienced enough to understand why it was referred to as the ‘word of the God-King.’

“They just can’t help themselves, can they?” he asked himself, his voice dripping with derision.

The lexicon defined it as ‘by his permission,’ or ‘at his will,’ but Simon knew that wasn’t quite right. The word was conditional. If this happened. Then that would happen. His doppelgänger had done something similar by making an earth effect powered by life force in the barrow mounds, but the trap would have been far more elegant with this.

The Librium Malifica would have definitely benefited from it, he realized almost immediately. If it hadn’t been forced to use tiny contact points, then the whole gilded edge would have been dangerous to touch instead of single random spots.

Maybe that was the point, though, he reflected as he thought about how close he’d come to getting sucked into hell by that evil book. Maybe the whole point was to choose which awful monster got to chew on your soul for the rest of eternity with a roll of the dice.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was what this word could do. It was a switch, and if he was reading right, then it was capable of multiple outputs based on the way the spell was written. If a hand gripped the hilt of a sword that was ensorcelled with this spell, then it might be able to do a lot of different things. A wand might be a better example, though. As he imagined it, it was almost like a flute or some other simple instrument.

However, in this case, you didn’t blow into it, and sound came out. You poured life force into it, and then, depending on which holes you covered, different effects came out. Simon had seen a few of the magi carrying wands and staves, and while he couldn’t be sure this was how they were designed without examining them, he was pretty sure that they would be something like this. Because unless they knew something he didn’t about the words of power, they didn’t exactly require any implements to make them work.

Simon burned through his remaining time reviewing this book as he looked for more useful details, and his mind raced. He didn’t even get to the book he’d expected to spend most of his time with. It turned out that the idea of learning new words was more intriguing than the possibility of casting old words in new ways.

He removed the seals and hid the books underneath some building materials, where they were unlikely to be found before he had another chance to do some reading. Then Simon rushed back to the scriptorium, where he hastily scribbled and sat ready with several good excuses in case his minder quizzed him.

Fortunately, the man barely seemed to notice he was gone. Unfortunately, because Simon spent the next couple of days trying to show the man that he wasn’t completely worthless, he wasn’t sent out as temporary slave labor for almost a week.

On the one hand, that was okay because his new words had given Simon a lot to think about, and his mind was already racing with ideas. On the other side, though, that was long enough that he was almost afraid to fetch his stolen books for fear that someone might have laid a trap. He struggled with what he should do for part of the day as he helped Magi Josphen gather and organize herbs for some healing experiment he was planning to perform. It was easy enough work. The hardest part was listening to the Magi expound on his medical theories; they were crazy enough that it made some of the backward healers he’d worked with over the years sound like well-informed masters of the craft.

When Simon was finally released and his moment of truth came, he wanted to believe that it was his heightened intuition that told him to risk it. The truth was simpler, though. He’d liberated the information, and he needed to learn as much of it as he could. In that sense, his paranoia was no match for his curiosity, and he found his stolen knowledge right where he left it.

Simon scooped it up immediately and started reading, giving himself three hours to absorb as much as possible. Of course, learning complex gestures for every word in such a short period of time was impossible, but he still wanted to know what he could.

In the end, it took less than an hour to grow disappointed with the tome. Whereas the first book had been surprisingly interesting, this one was like a badly written instruction manual for learning the waltz or a series of secret handshakes, and even before his allotted time had expired, he found himself disinterested enough to return to the lexicon he’d already read almost cover to cover in an attempt to gain more knowledge.

That didn’t last very long, though. The sound of two people talking as they entered the building on the floor below him and started up the stairs put the fear of God in him. This would be a bad place to get caught, and though he was never going to reunite with Zoa at this rate, he definitely didn’t want to end this life here.

Simon was up in a flash. He hid both books under a tarp so they wouldn’t be found immediately, and then, with only a quick glance to make sure the alley that the window overlooked was clear, he jumped the twelve feet down to the ground. From there, he immediately started walking purposefully back to the scriptorium, and when he arrived, he got immediately ready to work as he tried to look focused instead of worried.

He spent all of that day and most of the night waiting for the other shoe to drop, and when he was sent out on another errand the following day, he didn’t even attempt to go back to see if the books had been found. He had no evidence that anyone had even noticed them, of course, but he had no proof they didn’t either, and something about the current situation told him that he was inches from having to fight his way out of something ugly.

As the days passed, Simon told himself he’d find somewhere new to read. He promised himself he’d get some new books, even. Unfortunately, as much as Simon would have liked to linger and abduct more books to read, he didn’t get the chance. A few days later, he was woken up in the middle of the night by a stranger in black robes and told, “Follow close behind, but say nothing.”