The Scholar arrived home in the early afternoon. Jobless in his third week at the Archives—his wife would be furious. She had smiled for hours when the Scholar finally passed the Exam and earned a place alongside her in the Scribe’s Guild. With both of them as members of the Guild, it was practically guaranteed that their daughter could join as well, provided she earned a passable grade on the entrance exams. However, that dream would most definitely be shattered by the Scholar’s excommunication. He did not look forward to that conversation.

The Scholar paused at the door to his house, listening for any sign of his wife’s presence. Nothing but silence greeted him, and he sighed in relief. His wife’s secretarial work often stretched into the late evening. He entered. Only his daughter was home, sitting cross-legged on the floorboards under his desk.

At about five years of age, the Scholar’s daughter had rarely seen sunlight. This was by her own choice: whenever she set foot outside the home, she would shake silently until indoors again. Her eyes were the bleak grey of a winter sky, but she was too frail to have ever ventured outdoors during the wintertime. She often played with broken pens and crumpled paper where other children had dolls or toy weapons. While other youths chased one another through the streets, she had peered at the rough drafts and mis-written pages that her mother brought home from work. Lately, she also read the original reports that her father had devoted every spare moment to copying.

Today, the child inspected a half-burnt scrap of an old census report. She held the text sideways, pretending to read. The Scholar fought the urge to correct her, knowing from past attempts that it would not make a difference. Did his child stare at the text, uncomprehending, simply because she was trying to imitate his own working behavior? The Scholar shook his head. As he watched, the child turned from the burnt paper to the ground. Her hand curled around a pointed stone in the wooden crate that served as her toy-box. She scraped another indecipherable squiggle into the crisscrossing scratches on the crate.

“Dear child, your father has returned,” said the Scholar. He heard no response, but then, there never was one. She had not uttered a sound for years—not since the day a bright-eyed toddler had somehow escaped the house and wandered beyond the city limits. After that day, she had never been the same.

The Scholar cleared his throat, but his daughter continued pretending to read, an expression of grave concentration on her face. When no amount of shuffling and throat-clearing managed to shift her gaze, the Scholar tossed a few new reports into her crate. This, at least, attracted her attention. The stone dropped into the crate. She picked up the new paper, carefully smoothed it out against the floor, and stared at it—upside-down. The Scholar turned away with a sigh. At least she was looking at the correct side of the page.

Pacing before the child—who, at this point, likely could not even understand speech—the Scholar grumbled his grievances to the lifeless walls. As keepers of history, truth was the most fundamental principle! If they could not separate truth from lies in a time of peace and plenty, how would they manage to find any useful information if war or natural calamity were to strike? The Archives were meant to record the past in order to help future generations learn from the deeds of their forebears. If the Archives claimed that twenty soldiers had fought over a hundred outlaws, when in truth they could not even take down one, future town defenses might prove inadequate in the face of a real threat.

The Scholar fell heavily into his chair. He put his head in his hands. The paper peddler’s words came to him. “‘Not so elsewhere,’” he repeated in a faint whisper. “Oh, but why couldn’t it be—not so here?”

He paused then, an idea taking root. Inspiration kindled in his eyes.

“Why indeed?”

Snatching a sheet of paper and a pen, he began to jot down a basic outline. “Find a way to gather popular support... expose the deceitful senior archivists... find out who else condones the fraudulent reports, and expose them too. Anyone who stands to benefit from the falsehood is suspect. Only when all self-serving motives are gone will our Empire truly represent the Bounty of its name.”

In the evening, crowds of tired workers and officials headed home from their shifts. Among them was a secretary who had just finished transcribing poetry for a noble’s son. It was a taxing job; the boy could rarely make up his mind on what he wanted written, and dozens of drafts had been wasted when the boy changed his mind about words. To make matters worse, he had spilled his soup on the secretary’s sleeve partway through today’s session. The stain made an ugly brown mark on her pale grey secretarial uniform.

The secretary looked forward to returning home to her family. Her husband had been behaving strangely for the last several days. The Scholar read and wrote essays late into the night, working through dinner and several hours past sundown, even though he had no need for such intensive study after securing a prestigious job at the Archives. When the secretary pointed this out, the Scholar said only that he needed to improve his writing. He had also been unusually evasive about the rise in his recent spending habits, promising that he had used their savings for “a good cause” while dismissing her concerns about the upcoming tax collection.

Though the secretary respected her husband enough not to pry, she could not help but worry. Work in the Archives must be truly intense if the Scholar felt he had to practice his penmanship day and night. Faced with such a stressful new job, the Scholar could hardly be blamed for spending a little extra money at the tavern—or wherever all that money had gone. The secretary only wished that her husband trusted her enough to be honest about it, rather than hiding his obvious exhaustion behind vague excuses.

In the city square, the flow of people stuttered to a halt before the Memorial Square. The secretary grumbled as elbows and shoulders bumped into her. A shouting man had gathered a small crowd. It was the secretary’s husband.

“You live a lie! The official histories are false,” the Scholar proclaimed. By the hoarseness of his voice, he had been spouting such nonsense for quite a while.

“Open your eyes to the truth!” The Scholar thrust sheafs of paper into the hands of passing citizens. Some looked curiously at the paper, skimming over the essays that the Scholar had spent late nights penning. Others frowned at the squiggly writing that they clearly could not understand.

The secretary snagged a handout from a stack passing around the crowd. She recognized the Scholar’s painstakingly perfect penmanship all over the page. The first line read, ‘When the Empire blinds its people to the truth, corruption flourishes within the hierarchy.’

The secretary closed her eyes, unwilling to read further. Only a madman or a rebel would dare devise such treachery against the Empire. She crushed the paper into a ball and dropped it in the street. Madness was the only explanation. The Scholar must have gone mad from overwork. The alternative was unthinkable.

The secretary leapt out in front of the Scholar, grabbing at his arm. “Stop talking! What are you doing? Cease this nonsense at once, before anyone important notices,” she cried.

The Scholar shook off her hand. “Not now, dear. This is important—Listen, people: you live a lie!”

“Think of your career. The Guild could demote you for this,” the secretary hissed.

“No, they couldn’t.” The Scholar laughed bitterly and raised his voice to a shout. “Down with the Scribes’ Guild! Down with the establishment!”

“Shhh. Please be quiet. Someone might report you,” the secretary begged, placing a hand over his mouth. Finally securing a good grip of the Scholar’s arm, she tried to drag him toward the residential streets. He resisted. Desperate, the secretary tried to reason with him. “All scribes owe the luxury of our lives to the Guild’s benevolence. It isn’t our place to criticize the system.”

That caught the Scholar’s attention. He tore himself from the secretary’s grip, eyes burning with unnatural anger. “It is precisely our place. If the writers of history do not speak against deception, who will? If we are compliant in the Guild’s scheme, no one will ever realize the truth.”

The secretary gaped at her husband. When had this madness overruled his sense? She tugged his sleeve again, but at that moment an elbow hit her in the back. She stumbled, and the Scholar steadied her with a hand to the shoulder. The crowd roiled as everyone craned their heads to look at some distant attraction. Above the din of confused voices, one rose in a commanding bellow.

“City Guard! Surrender the rebel and you will be spared.”

The secretary looked at her husband, with his hard-set jaw and determination in his eyes. The Scholar would no doubt be executed if he was arrested as a rebel. However, a madman might be treated more leniently. The secretary pushed through the crowd until she could see the soldiers clearly. The leader was a broad, imposing fellow, and he towered over the secretary by almost two heads. She squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye.

“Sir, please forgive my husband. He is feverish from the flu. He doesn’t know what he is saying. Once he recovers, he will stop this madness.”

“Your husband?” the guardsman replied. He drew his sword in a flash.

Pain bloomed across the secretary’s stomach. She stumbled back, bumping into a person. An apology formed on her lips, but liquid spattered from her mouth instead of words. The ground tipped and rose. Dirt smeared over the neat folds of her work clothes, and she tried to brush it off before it stained the grey fabric. Distant screaming reached her ears. As the world wobbled, the guardsman’s voice rang out once more.

“Seize the traitor and all associates!”

More screaming. The secretary curled up to avoid the feet that seemed to be running in every direction. Her clothes were covered in dark blotches, and she could not scrub them off. In the distance, the crowd parted. The Scholar saw her, and his expression contorted in horror.

“Run,” the secretary croaked, scratching at the dirt road.

The Scholar fled.

At home, the Scholar gave his daughter all of the coins in his pouch: one handful, a total of fifteen coins. It was not enough to survive two days, but it was all that he could spare. Ever since he started creating flyers and posters, money had been scarce.

“Your mother is dead. I am as good as dead,” the Scholar told the child. “I saw too much in the Archives, and the Empire would rather kill a single honest scribe than expose a thousand crooked ones. I acted too soon. Now I will pay the price. You must not make the same mistake. If you obey their rules, you can remain safe until the time is right. You can survive. Understand?”

The child looked up at him. Her eyes were wide and guileless.

“Listen. You must run to the inn and find the paper peddler from the Rainlands. Here, take this.” The Scholar grabbed a scrap of paper and a charred twig from the hearth. He scribbled instructions and a rough map of the city. “The Rainlands peddler at this inn, remember. Don’t be afraid; he is kind and well-mannered. No matter what, do not approach anyone from the Scribes’ Guild. If you forget what to do, find someone who can read this.”

The Scholar pressed the note into the child’s hands. She smiled and handed him a clear pebble in exchange. He tried to blink back the sorrow.

The child still did not speak. The Scholar could not blame the child for her silence. If she did not understand, perhaps it was for the better—indeed, it would be far more pleasant to live a life in ignorance than be burdened by harsh truths that one could never rectify. Alas that the Scholar could no longer count himself among the ignorant! Some truths, once known, could never be unlearned. He tucked the pebble into his pocket, stuffed as much food as possible into a burlap potato sack, and fled into the dusk.

By night, the Scholar passed the western city gate with only a minor arrow wound to the arm. Come the next morning, he was thoroughly drenched, but he dared not sleep past sunrise for fear of pursuit.

The Scholar ran when he could, and he walked when he tired; he had no destination beyond the vague notion of a friendly civilization.