“What do you want?” Reina asked impatiently. If that was considered rude, so be it. She didn’t feel any particular need to be polite.
“We expected you to be in Tokyo,” said the man. A continuation of his earlier thought, as if she had not interjected at all. “We’d have been here sooner, in fact, but you’re not easy to track down. With a family like yours—”
“I am not in contact with my family,” Reina said. “Nor do I wish to be bothered.”
“Miss Mori, if you would indulge me for just a moment—”
“You clearly know who I am,” said Reina. “So shouldn’t you know, then, that I have turned down every offer I receive? Whatever you imagine I accepted, I did not. And whatever it is you plan to offer me, I decline it as well.”
“Surely you must feel some obligation,” said the man. “A scholar like yourself, you must think it valuable to have access to the Alexandrian records.”
Reina stiffened; Atlas had always said the Society was known among certain groups, but still, she hated to think the place she prized so mightily could be referenced with such open disregard.
“What good are the archives,” the man pressed, catching the look on her face, “when only a small percentage of the world’s magical population can ever learn from them? At least the artifacts contained in this museum are offered to the whole of the mortal world.”
“Knowledge requires caretakers,” said Reina flatly. “And if that’s all—”
“There are better ways to care for knowledge than to hide it away.”
Another version of her might have agreed with him. As it was, though, she spared him half a glance.
“Who are you?”
“It’s not who I am, but what I stand for,” said the man.
“Which is?”
“Freedom of information. Equality. Diversity. New ideas.”
“And what do you think you will gain from me?”
“The Society is inherently classist,” said the man. “Only the highest trained medeians will ever reach its rank, and its archives only serve to secure an elitist system which has no oversight. All the world’s treasures under one roof,” he prompted, “with only a single organization to control its distribution?”
“I,” Reina said, “have no knowledge of anything you speak.”
“True, you are not a member yet,” the man agreed, dropping his voice. “You still have time to make other choices. You are not bound to the Society’s rules, nor to its secrets.”
“Even assuming any of this were true,” Reina muttered, “what would you want from me?”
“It is not what we want from you, Miss Mori, but what we can offer you.” The man slid a card from his inside pocket, handing it to her. “Someday, should you find you are trapped by the choice you’ve made, you may contact us. We will see to it that your voice is heard.”
The card read Nothazai, either the man’s name or his pseudonym, and on the back, THE FORUM. A reference, of course, to a subversion of everything the Society was. The Roman Forum was a marketplace of ideas, the most celebrated meeting place in the world. It was the center of commerce, politics, and civility. In short, where the Society cloistered itself behind closed doors, the Forum was open to all.
But there was a reason the Library of Alexandria had been forced to hide in the first place.
“Are you truly the Forum?” Reina asked neutrally. “Or are you simply the mob?”
When she glanced up, he—Nothazai—had not looked away. “It is no secret what you can do, Reina Mori,” he said, before amending, “At least, it is no secret what you could do. We are citizens not of a hidden world, but of a global economy; an entire human race. It is a troubled world we live in, ever on the brink of progress and regression, and very few are given the opportunity to make true changes. Power like the Society’s does not elevate this world; it only changes hands, continuing to isolate its advantages.”
It was an old argument. Why have empires and not democracies? The Society’s version of an answer was obvious: because some things were unfit to rule themselves.
“You think I can contribute nothing from where I stand, I take it?” Reina prompted.
“I think it is obvious you are a blend of broad dissatisfactions, Miss Mori,” said Nothazai. “You resent privilege in all its forms, including your own, yet you show no desire to unmake the present system. I think someday you will awaken to your own conviction, and when you do, something will compel you forward. Whoever’s cause that will be, I hope you will consider ours.”
“Do you mean to accuse me of some sort of tyranny by proxy?” Reina asked. “Or is that an unintended consequence of your recruitment tactics?”
The man shrugged. “Is it not a proven fact of history that power is not meant to exist in the hands of the very few?”