Arrested as a heretic, Gaspard has nothing left but the nights until the stake is built. Each night, he has to invent a sin for Damian, the young inquisitor behind the grate, and every sin pushes his execution back one more day. The problem is that lately, Damian seems to wait less for a real sin than for the voice telling him the lie.
Locked in the prison tower of a theocratic city-state, Gaspard has been arrested as a heretic. Until the stake is finished, he must confess a sin to the inquisitor behind the grate every night. The sin doesn't have to be real. The more believable his story, the more days he buys, one at a time. A strange gift called precedent sight lets him sense which sins will pass and which won't. But there's one man it can't read: Damian, the young inquisitor who writes down his confessions each night by the light of a single candle. No precedent says what Damian really wants.
- Damian always writes down every sin word for word. Then one night, he stops his pen and asks: Is that true? It's a question no inquisitor should ask.
- When his precedent sight flashes records of old trials past him, he starts to work out which sin will bring Damian back to this grate tomorrow night.
- The stake gets closer to finished every day. Even so, one night he catches himself choosing something true to say to Damian instead of tonight's sin.
Damian always writes down every sin word for word. Then one night, he stops his pen and asks: Is that true? It's a question no inquisitor should ask.
