Page 83 of Deadly Maiden

He nods. “I see no reason not to.”

We start to ascend the broad stairs. People are continually going up or down, bearing books, or chatting to friends. It’s an entire community here, from young to old. I’m craning my neck, taking in everything around us.

“I can see myself settling in and living inside this place, if they had food.”

He laughs. “I get you. Books do that to me too. Though I used to be a hazard, once upon a time. I had an uncontrollable flame-breathing episode. It lasted a few years.”

I imagine this place burning. “That would be a problem.”

“That is a mild description of it.”

I can’t help the snort of laughter that escapes me. A man going downstairs makes a shushing motion.

We reach the first floor and turn to head up another flight.

This is when the strangest feeling wriggles in. Not scary. Not wonderful. Just an awareness that something or someone new is coming.

It’s not Anathema, who has never quite left me. He’s out there in the eternal shadows. Even daytime has shadows galore.

No, this is…different. I suspect I know what it is.

“The history section,” Rorsyd declares, distracting me as he gestures broadly at the rows and rows of books that peel away to left and right. Never-ending bookshelves. From downstairs, these seemed to be shallow shelves, a façade, but they’re more than that. They extend into the wings of the library and the endpoint shrinks away until the people are as small as a hawk circling in the sky.

This may take a while.

“Our school library was five stacks of head-high shelves, in a large room that was nevertheless”—my voice squeaks—“not quite this large. I feel like a child in a lollipop shop.”

“I have a lollipop you can suck.” After I groan, Rorsyd laces his hands together and pushes them out before him until they crack. “I can find anything you want.” Then he adds more words, so softly I wonder if he meant it to be overheard. “I may regret this.”

He helps me find three textbooks on Orencian and Zardrakian history, one of which is dedicated to the war in which my parents died. I sit down at a reading desk on the second floor, and I fall into a time before I was born.

It’s absorbing but also daunting. I love history, but this book might tell me more than I wish to know.

Around the time my stomach is screaming for food, Rorsyd drags me outside, to the rear, where we find an artificial lake. A few small huts sell food and drink to a scattered multitude of students and booklovers. I’m jealous of the ones carrying their books out here.

We circle the lake and find the fallen, shattered goblin statue. It’s surrounded by trees, black with mold, and twice life-size, which means almost my size if glued back together. Grass has sprouted over it and around the edges. Yellow daisies flower between its toes. We eat our sandwiches and drink hollyoak tea sitting on a curved, teak bench-seat.

Through the trees and across the lake, I can see the library.

No one seemed curious about where we strolled to or chose to eat lunch.

“Do we have anything to write on for this note?”

Triumphantly, from a coat pocket he produces a paper pad, a quill, and a bottle of ink.

The bench seat makes for a bumpy but adequate desk.

First, he writes a note about wanting his rooms surveilled, then he pulls me onto his lap, and I write one to Thander Munk about the possibility of sending letters to Landos using him as a conduit. Then I write one to Saphora in Wenway, asking whether she would be okay with me visiting and perhaps learning from her.

A battered tin box seems where we should leave these—especially sinceA of the C Uis scratched on the inside.

“How do we get a reply?” I close the lid and push it under the grass-engulfed goblin.

“We’ll come back tomorrow, same time.” He rubs his chin. “Spies use this. It’s called a killer drop. No idea why.”

“I don’t think I want to know.”

That niggling feeling of something coming persists.

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