The woman's reaction was peculiar. She neither admitted nor denied but dipped a silver spoon into honey, drawing an incomplete sun pattern on the stone table. When the pattern was two-thirds finished, she suddenly frowned and cursed, then quickly wiped it away with her sleeve, as if afraid of being discovered.
Clearly.
This was a hint that certain magical bindings had started to affect her, so she had to cease her hinting behavior.
"Try this," Ian suddenly raised his voice, pushing over a plate of dried figs, "imported from the Sinai Peninsula."
The proprietor came by at the right time to refill tea, dissipating the effect of the Sound Insulation Spell. The two chatted like ordinary diners about trivial topics until the sound of the morning prayer bells from the temple direction was heard. As the woman stood up, a colored bead slipped from her wrist and rolled to Ian's feet.
"Pay attention to the woman who died today." As she bent down to pick up the bead, this sentence floated into Ian's ear like a spider's thread.
Ian's silver spoon froze mid-air: "Isn't the body already—"
He didn't finish his sentence.
The woman was already leaving.
"Pay attention to the woman who died tonight, not the body... but her 'death'." The woman didn't turn back, only slightly turned her face, her veil shimmering in the sunlight. Before the words had completely left her mouth, she had turned toward the door, her black robe lightly swaying in the night wind like a ghost of the night. The wind chime sounded again, and her figure completely merged into the darkness outside.
As if she had never existed.
As she left, a strange wind arose, the sound of the colored beads clashing with each other formed a short melody. Ian stared at her departing back, unconsciously furrowing his brow. The woman's steps seemed composed, but he noticed her right foot's movement was somewhat unnatural—like she was stepping to a specific rhythm, or leaving marks on the ground visible only to wizards.
"A hint similar to Morse code?" Ian was somewhat helpless, as he wasn't a wizard of this era and thus naturally wouldn't understand such potential specialized codes that might belong to a common wizard.
The din of the restaurant flooded back into his ears. When the one-eyed proprietor came over to clear the tableware, he quietly slipped Ian a palm leaf, on which a few hieroglyphs written with beeswax gave hints about the woman's identity.
Probably the enthusiastic proprietor saw through the woman's disguise, at least knowing she was from the Divine Hall and feared Ian might encounter some deceit.
A helpful proprietor, who certainly must have had a mysterious past; otherwise, he couldn't have such sharp observation.
Ian crumbled the leaf in his palm, and as the fragments fell from between his fingers, they spontaneously burned into ash. He took one last glance out the window—the silhouette of the black-robed woman had disappeared at the street corner, but the air still lingered with a special spice fragrance, like an unspoken invitation. She was exploiting his curiosity as a wizard.
As for the purpose.
Perhaps hoping Ian undergoes a deeper investigation, or perhaps merely baiting to make Ian part of the sacrifices.
Ian couldn't make an accurate judgment, as he wasn't particularly familiar with that woman.
The date palm porridge on the table had already cooled, a thin film forming on its surface. Ian pierced that film with the silver spoon, suddenly realizing a contradiction: If all participants had been cast with Quietening Spells, how did the black-robed woman hint so much information to him? Unless... unless the spells on her were failing, or—
"Deliberately left loopholes." Ian murmured to himself, fingers unconsciously rubbing the magic wand hidden in his sleeve. He thought of the sun pattern that was wiped away after being drawn two-thirds, recalled her strange steps, even remembered the melody produced when those colored beads collided... all these seemed like some meticulously designed code.
Outside the window, the clouds above the temple began forming an unnatural spiral pattern. Ian withdrew his gaze, pressing a few copper coins under the empty bowl. As he got up, his peripheral vision caught something flashing on the opposite seat—the woman had left a grain of golden sand, eerily hovering half an inch above the table surface, configured into an arrow shape pointing north.
"What's there?"
The hovering sand arrow trembled slightly in front of Ian, like a magic compass pointing the way. He reached to touch it, and those tiny particles immediately scattered, then reassembled in the air into a simplified hourglass shape.
Ian saw the hinting arrow and mused, knowing that the woman said to be attentive to tonight's death meant that no anomaly had occurred yet? Ian grew more curious about what the woman truly meant, and what kind of change was happening in this city.
"A certain hidden truth destined to be buried by history." Ian realized he might be witnessing the possible reason for the decline of the Ancient Egyptian Pantheon.
As he considered this, he fished out a waist token and unconsciously rubbed the bronze waist token pilfered from the woman.
The edge of the token was etched with intricate lotus patterns, and the center was a sun symbol coiled by a snake, cold and heavy to the touch.
Obviously, this was not a regular priest's insignia; the magical fluctuation it contained reminded him of the Protective Spells in Hogwarts' Forbidden Book Area.
"Quite weighty indeed."
Ian weighed the token in his hand.
It was the token he had pilfered from the woman. Not that Ian wanted to disguise himself as her, but he wanted to borrow her identity—Memphis Grand Library's white stone columns gleamed like ivory in the midday sun.