It’s not a person, you can’t argue with it. No.
…
No. You’re not listening. It’s not a person. It doesn’t have a, it doesn’t have first-person locution. That’s not what it is.
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It’s… it’s not that. It’s the Most High. It just thinks. There’s no body, there’s no ego, there’s nothing but the voice and the thinking. That’s what it is.
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I don’t know. It’s been in charge for like a thousand years. They do what it says. It isn’t itself — I mean, it draws from the Dark well but it isn’t alive or Undying. I don’t think. It doesn’t do magic, the way aristos do magic. It’s an effect.
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Tradition? Because that’s the way it’s been done forever? I don’t know. But you can’t argue with it. I know that.
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Because everyone knows that. It’s disembodied. It’s just an idea. It’s a thing-in-progress they made back when the city was founded.
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It’s a sovereign idea. It’s the idea of sovereignty. I don’t know.
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No, because —
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Well, fuck you too. But look. It’s already been decided. You walked out of the Tower with a Type Nine volume. You violated the Hoarding protocols and then you compounded it by getting drunk and singing a Type Eleven song in public. Case closed.
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XXXXX! Nobody cares. Pelagic! Listen to yourself.
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Maybe, but since I’m never going to see you again it doesn’t matter.
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Didn’t they, I thought you knew.
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You’ve been sentenced to the Quodrion.
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I —
…
I said —
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Forget it then. You sing a Type Eleven in an alehouse, they figure you want to go Quodrion. Dumbass. I’ll probably get in trouble now for telling you.
…
Whatever.

(Partial transcript of Vera Vera Ilermalken’s last conversation with XXXXX, dated 06/33/1486. Censored by order of the Most High.)

SEE ALSO: Hoarding of Secrets Act, Quodrion, Vera Ilermalken