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anticipated my next question. “She didn’t live here in Bunard. We found out about it from the Merum priest in Slygo.”
    The craft gift was the broadest of the gifts Aer had sent and could manifest into any number of professions depending on its intersection with the talent and temperament of the wielder: ironsmith, alchemist, or jeweler among countless others. But the profession tended to shape the gift so if an alchemist bestowed the gift on another it often manifested in that way again. If it went free then it could become almost anything within the craft family once more. Priests referred to the circumstance as Aer’s economy.
    It wasn’t the answer I’d expected and, relieved, I let my worst fear fall from me. Almost all of the heads of the noble families held a gift of craft. That was how they made and maintained their fortune. If my suspicion had been correct, there would be no need to steal another gift of the same kind. But there were a few noble families that held other gifts, and they’d been talented enough over the centuries to build a fortune with them.
    I muttered a curse as I sifted through my flimsy logic, winnowing speculations from facts. There were too many things I didn’t know. Custos’s expression pulled the next question from me. “What was her profession?”
    “She was an alchemist.”
    Lira had been killed too far from Bunard for me to have wandered that night, but perhaps I could get at the truth in a different way. “How did she die?”
    “Stroke.”
    I took a deep breath. “How old was she?”
    Custos blinked, and I imagined somewhere in his mind he pulled a book from a shelf to read the answer. “Thirty-eight.”
    My stomach lurched, my guts telling me that I’d dismissed my fear too soon. Old men and women died, but stroke or not, a son or daughter was usually there to receive the gift. Strokes in the middle-aged weren’t unheard of, but too many coincidences piled up for my comfort. What benefit could a noble possibly obtain from stealing a charism of craft that had been imbued with the talent for alchemy? Only one of the three temptations presented itself. Power. And they weren’t settling for half measures.
    “Custos, what would happen if a man could assemble all the gifts?”
    He blinked at me and licked his lips. “You sat in Master Orwin’s class, my boy.”
    I didn’t feel like confessing how often I’d slept through the dusty lectures that could turn the most dynamic parts of history into stale bread. Yet I remembered one topic that captivated me despite Master Orwin’s monotone: the Gift Wars. More ballads and epics had been composed about the period than any other, and I’d listened with rapt attention to the tales of men, physically and mentally gifted beyond others, wading through fields of blood as they tried to bring the continent together under their rule. Their quest for power stood out in lurid detail even in Orwin’s dry monotone, the slaughter horrific enough to make the wars of the gift of kings that came centuries later look like a border skirmish.
    “No one quite succeeded,” Custos said, “but a few came close enough to fuel speculation.” Then he leaned forward to tap the weathered book in my hands, the one filled with those few genealogies that had been given the right to rule. “There have been theologians throughout history—those who live and think on the fringe of orthodoxy—who believe the gift of the divine right of kings can be duplicated.”

Chapter 5

    Like so many rooms in the Merum cathedral, the one containing the catalogs of the gifted had only one entrance. For a moment I reflected on how nice it would be to live an existence where back doors weren’t needed or required. “Custos, I need two things. First, I need a list of noble families who don’t have the gift of craft.”
    He ducked his head like an owl. “Done. It won’t take more than a moment for me to write them down.”
    I waved a hand as he turned away.