Miyara delivers the parchment, and I step back into the other room. Unclasp the top and pull the scroll out. The seal looks unbroken, the parchment yellow but still supple, like you might expect from something a few years old. All of that could be faked. But my father taught me to write. I will know his script.

  I break the seal and unroll it. And there it is—my father’s stern hand, straight-lined and narrow-looped, a controlled kind of elegance. Just like him.

  A wave of sadness hits me, despite all the things I resent him for, despite the way he put me in the temple and then ignored me, as though he had better things to do than be a father. Under all that, I still miss him. Still hate whoever murdered him. Am still his daughter.

  Dear Aletheia—

  If you’re reading this, I have failed. I am sorry. I could not tell you of my plans, for fear of the truth getting through even your thick blind. I have enemies in the temple—I am not sure who yet, but the list narrows—who can use watersight in ways I never imagined. They are likely in power now—I do not doubt they are devious enough to take the council, if I have not stopped them. Beware these men. Your blind may be no protection against them.

  Nerimes. I remember the way he saw through my blind in the temple, the way he impossibly knew my thoughts. And how he could control which parts of his mind came through his blind—giving me just his sight, or just a few words. I didn’t imagine it. This is only more confirmation of his guilt. As if I ever doubted.

  Beware also the rumors that spread against me, even now. I am no heretic, Aletheia. Or if I am, it is because we all should be. You have had no choice, have been a challenge to tradition since I entered you in the temple, and I apologize for that, but I believe it has made you stronger.

  I stop here, read the lines again. My father never apologized for what he did, and I think he is trying here, but this is not what I wanted from him. Not to justify it, but just to say he’s sorry. Even if he’s right, that I am stronger for having gone through it.

  I needed you here. You are the smartest of your class, and the strongest, and the rule against females entering the training is one of the many tenets of Ujeism that needs reform. It has nothing to do with the truth, and anyone who has been Immersed knows this. Your power is proof the religion is wrong, that our traditions have strayed from Uje’s truth.

  I suck in a breath. Even this, in the hands of a strict believer, or in the mouth of a student, would be a potent heresy. Enough to cause upset among the theocrats. Perhaps there was truth to the rumors he was a heretic—not that it matters to me. I have always been one. And I couldn’t care less for our traditions, so long as we stay true to our principles.

  My enemies will likely try to kill you for that. To keep the traditions from changing, lest they lose power at the same time.

  I half-laugh. “Now you tell me?” I mutter to the empty room. “Could have used that information a week ago.”

  The Immersion Chronicles hold the truth, Aletheia. Every monk’s experience is chronicled after his first Immersion, and gathered there. I hope you already know this. I hope you have survived the Immersion, and remember the truth others do not. The signs are there in the Chronicles too, but it has taken years of study to decipher them.

  The Deluge. The Deluge is coming, and sooner than any have thought. If we do not reform Ujeism, reform the beliefs of the city, we will be swept away with the rest. You must ready the city, Aletheia. Ready the world, if you can.

  I frown and read it again. The Deluge? The best scholars say the next one is still centuries away, maybe more. But Nerimes mentioned this as one of my father’s heresies.

  His script changes below this, looking more hurried.

  Find the Chronicles. Read them. Defeat my enemies. Do not let them corrupt Uje’s message. Find the truth and spread it to anyone you can. This may have been my fatal error, to attempt change within the temple first. I have been blinded by this quest. Obsessed. I may… have let you down in this. Not been the father you need, for the sake of fathering the world. Your mother’s death—

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  There’s something crossed out here. I curse, and lean in close, try to make it out, but my father blotted it out entirely. What did he want to say? What about my mother’s death?

  There are only a few lines below this, scrawled as though written while running.

  You are the best of us, Theia. I am sorry to have given you this life, but I had no choice. I hope you see that.

  Your father, always,

  Stergjon

  And then it’s done. I read it again, and again, trying to soak it in, to find my father in it. To understand what he means about the Deluge, about the Immersion Chronicles. The immersions are the final test before being elevated to seer, when we get immersed in the ocean. A few students go mad from it every year, especially those who try before they’re ready. Everyone is forbidden to speak of it afterwards—but apparently they record their experiences.

  Still, what can they say? That Uje spoke to them in the ocean, told them the Deluge was coming? No one would be able to keep that a secret. No one would want to. Father says he spent years studying them—could he have gone mad doing it? Or become too heretical to interpret what was written there?

  No. I cannot believe it of my dad, even if he put me into a temple full of men. He was brave and stern, but never a fool. Whatever he found there, I don’t doubt it’s right.

  I linger on the other parts here, too—the apologies for what he did to me, the crossed-out section about my mom, the way he signed the bottom—not Love your father, or I miss you, or even I’m proud of you. Just Your father, always, Stergjon.

  “A slophole to the last,” I mutter, even as I’m wiping my eyes, even as I know I’m probably going to carry this piece of paper with me till I die. I read it again, then fold it carefully along the seams and shove it into the tight wrappings under my porter’s shirt.

  It hasn’t told me anything new about the traditionalists, or who else was involved in the plot—my dad doesn’t say anything about the Seilam Deul—but it does show he knew it was coming, was trying to stop it. And it gives me another clue into his plans—he must have been rethinking Ujeism for a long time, to have entered me in the temple almost ten years ago.

  And the Deluge. He seems really convinced that it’s coming, soon. Conventional wisdom says that anyone who follows Ujeism will be saved from the Deluge by Uje, who is after all God of the Waters. But every religion says something like this—according to fifth-year lessons, the Daraa believe the wealthiest will be saved, the Deul the most craftologically advanced, the Pearlers something about the most peaceful, and the Bamani the ones who earn the most glory.

  I stand up, and Temerana appears at the door. “Is—everything all right, my lady?”

  Very different tone from when I met her outside the palace. “Do you believe you’ll be saved, if you follow Jeianism to the letter?”

  She starts, then nods. “Of course. Theracant Aynma even thinks there is proof that some theracants have already been saved.”

  “So what about the rest of the world? We just got lucky enough to be born in the place with the correct faith?”

  Temerana shakes her head. “No. I think… maybe they are all right. That the truth is different in each place, or—”

  “Or the whole thing is metaphor,” I say, readjusting the staff on my back. “That none of it is really true, exactly. It’s just trying to explain something you can’t say directly in words.”

  She narrows her eyes in thought, and I revise my low opinion of this girl. She is the product of a hard system, but there is quality underneath. “Maybe so,” she says. “You’re… done with the letter?”

  “I am.”

  “And need to see Regiana or Miyara?”

  I purse my lips. They will not like me leaving, but I have to go. I need to talk all this over with Gaxna. “No. No, I don’t think so. I will find them later.”

  “As you wish.” She steps out of the doorway.

  I walk out unguided, through the sterile lower hall with its closed rooms and scents of vomit and lavender. I know Regiana is right, that this is probably the safest place in the city, but Gaxna isn’t going to come here. And whatever else happens, I’m staying with Gaxna, so…

  The courtyard of grass and fountains is full of waiting people, even in the fading evening light. We will work it out somehow. I didn’t really realize it until I read my father’s letter, until I got clear on who he was, but I need Gaxna. My father is dead, and his last words to me were about politics, not about us. Maybe he never loved me like I remember.

  I climb onto a minor guildhouse as the mansions give way to New Serei. Either way, he’s gone now, like my mom, and I need someone here and now. Someone to love me and laugh with me and watch my back, not just be a memory I waste my life on.

  I will avenge my father. But if it doesn’t go well, I can still be with Gaxna, maybe travel like she was talking about. This is just one thing I want to do in my life. She is the rest of it. And I need to tell her that, now, before whatever tempest is building finally breaks.