The Silent Manuscript was a cipher, a weight in his pack both physical and spiritual. It altered the atmosphere about Felix. Capital politics, the respectful wariness of the people, even Kael's vow for vengeance—all now became the absent-minded thrashing of beetles on the single leaf of a tree whose magnitude he only slowly came to appreciate.
He kept the manuscript hidden, even from Liora. To speak of it was dangerous, as though calling attention to it would attract attention itself. Instead, he spent each day in a kind of wired tension, reading the Codex not for Aethyran history, but for hints of itself. He searched for anomalies, sequences which implied that there was more to existence than what he saw. The emissary's phrase—"the Great Narrative"—rang repeatedly in his head. Was Aethyr
