Page 17 of The Silver Spider
“There’s a fee?” Serephone stared at the entrance clerk, disgusted. “I thought libraries were free.” Not that she’d ever been in a library. There was a shop in town boasting several shelves of books for borrow—after signing one’s name in blood. But there still wasn’t any charge.
The clerk stared down his nose. “No knowledge worth having is free, Ms. Libraries require funds to maintain operations.”
It had the sound of a well-rehearsed speech. “Is the fee refundable?”
“Of course not.”
What horseshit. Her spiders reacted to her irritation, swarming under her sleeves until she forced herself to calm. She was already on edge, and sometimes they reacted without her having to command them. That wasn’t a show she wanted to put on in broad daylight in front of humans. It would sure make it easier for her mother to find her, though.
Serephone paid the fee, filled out the application for a lending card and took the printed brochure explaining the rules. It was a damn good thing she’d decided to get a work permit rather than a visitor’s permit—she’d be broke by now if she hadn’t anticipated the hunt taking longer than a few days. She missed her sisters, and hoped her mother had made them stay put.
She used the research cards to find call numbers for the history of the city, current maps, books on fae and important citizens—and gossip magazines. Anyone rich, male, and fae, would possibly be in gossip rags. A shipment of them came to town once a month, which was how the local women stayed up to date on current fashions, and followed the doings of their favorite socialites.
It wasn’t long before she began coming across references to the fae. Rising from her seat at a long table, she approached the librarian. “Can you tell me where the fae districts are? The maps only tell me street names, there are no boundaries drawn.”
The bored woman glanced at her, and wrote something down. “You have the wrong map,” was the brief reply. “Here’s the call number for the census maps. They show district boundaries. They don’t call them that, though. The fae call them demesnes.”
“Thanks.”
Spreading the map out across her area of the table—ignoring the looks of those sitting near her, just let them say something—she read the key, identifying the color assigned to fae districts, and hunted for her current position, marking it with a bit of balled up paper. Then she plotted her way to the first of the fae areas, grimacing when she realized the distance. It wasn’t a trip she’d care to make on foot, so she’d fork up the coin for a public conveyance. The fae demesne encompassed six city blocks and their own park of considerable size. Their territory backed against a side of the Dome, a position she recognized distantly as being defensive. Enemies would never be able to cut them off on all sides…but did that mean they had a backdoor out of the Dome?
After an hour of reading and sitting still, tiredness began to slow her thinking. For the sake of practicality, she choose a few of the books to borrow and made notes of the others, putting them away. She had several scraps of notes and a general direction to aim her hunt. But it wouldn’t be today. She needed sleep, and food—and she had to be alert for work in the evening.
There was more than one lead to chase down.
