The Swindler and the False God - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The Saint was named Xize.

It was said that he heard a divine oracle at sixteen, took over the White Tower Monastery at nineteen, and cured the queen of the madness that had plagued her for years at twenty-two.

The people in the city said he was the closest man to God.

The first time I saw him, I only felt that he was very far from human.

He was so pale he hardly looked alive.

White robes, white gloves, and beneath white lashes, a pair of pale golden eyes.

Even when he looked at people, it was like he was looking at a piece of incriminating evidence that needed to be filed away.

The escort shoved me in front of him.

“Lord Saint, this woman impersonated the Holy Maiden in the South Market and swindled silver coins from seventeen households.”

Xize asked, “How much did she swindle?”

“Three hundred and twenty coins.”

“Has she returned them?”

I said, “I spent them.”

The escort cursed, “And you dare say that!”

I tilted my head and looked at him.

“If I didn’t dare, would that make the money come back?”

He raised his hand to hit me.

Xize’s cross tapped lightly against the tabletop.

The sound was very soft.

But the escort’s hand froze in midair.

“No one is beaten in the White Tower,” Xize said.

I looked at his gloves.

Clean, slender, even the curve of his knuckles seemed to have been measured by religious law.

People like him were the easiest to deceive.

They were used to sorting everything into guilty and innocent.

And what I was best at was standing between the two, making it impossible for them to tell the difference.

Xize had someone unlock my shackles.

The escort grew anxious.

“My lord, she’ll run.”

“The White Tower has seven gates.”

Xize looked at me.

“She won’t get out.”

I rubbed my wrists, red from the restraints.

“You’re very confident.”

“It isn’t confidence.”

He set a black key on the table.

“It’s fact.”

The key was very small, with a sapphire set into the end.

That was the thing I had come to steal.

The White Tower’s sacred relic.

Legend said it could open the shrine and retrieve the Holy Blood.

The black market had offered me five thousand gold coins for it.

Enough for me to leave the capital, buy a boat, and never have to pretend to be divine to cheat poor people again.

But Xize had just placed the key right in front of me.

Like setting a knife beside a thief’s hand.

I reached out.

The escort held his breath.

My fingertips stopped above the key.

Xize did not stop me.

I smiled, then changed course and picked up the cup of water beside it.

“I’m thirsty.”

Xize watched me drink.

“Do you know what that is?”

“I do.”

“And you still dared to touch it?”

“Didn’t you dare to set it there?”

He did not smile.

But I saw something shift faintly in the depths of his eyes.

Like a drop of ink falling into snow.