Siora’s silence was deafening. Gharek didn’t hear so much as an exhalation from her. This time when her hand brushed his arm, he didn’t pull away. “I don’t believe Estred feels that way, nor do Ithink she’d want you to use a vulnerable woman like Asil or even a powerful being like Malachus, whose only sin is also being born different, to help her. She already knows you love her.”
He sighed. “Love is the concubine of both fear and desperation when you’re a parent,” he said flatly. “And ruthlessness has no measure. Just ask Tanarima’s sister, who sold my child so she could feed hers.”
There was nothing more to say. Siora stayed quiet after that, and Gharek rode the edge of sleep, pulled back briefly by her shifting positions and pressing her body against his—whether for warmth or comfort, he couldn’t say.
“Estred will never be friendless, Gharek.” It was the promise of a supplicant devoted to a cause. “Neither will you. I swear it.” Her fingers dug into his arm. “On my father’s spirit. I swear it.”
They didn’t speak of their conversation the following morning. Gharek was relieved. Talk like that was a flaying in its way, and one needed time to recover. Siora’s behavior was no different than before his revelations, though she smiled more often than the previous day. Who knew what moved the emotions of this mysterious woman in whose arms he’d fallen asleep last night? Hard riding and few stops brought them back to Domora in short order. Gharek used the last of the remainingbelshasto stable the gelding in one of the more scrupulous stable yards that guaranteed the animal and its tack would still be there when they returned.
Siora skipped alongside him as they hurried toward the royal library, a worry pinching her features. Crescent shadows of fatigue darkened the skin under her eyes. The spot they chose to camp overnight might have been a peaceful one, but neither of them had slept well. Gharek had dreamed of the night he’d rescued Estred,waking several times panting as if he’d run from Domora to Kraelag and back. When sleep reclaimed him, so did the nightmare. Whatever plagued Siora’s slumber was no less unpleasant. She thrashed in her sleep, legs kicking out as she fought off some unseen assailant. Her mumblings were nonsensical except once when she called out for her father in a terrified voice.
That was memorable, for the air around them had turned cold as midwinter for several moments, and while Gharek couldn’t see anything in the encompassing dark, he had the distinct sense they were no longer two under the willow but three. He’d been grateful to see the dawn.
He slowed his stride so she didn’t have to constantly jog to keep up. The royal library wasn’t far from the stable yard, but the way required navigation through narrow streets so packed with people and carts, it was easier to go on foot than by horseback.
Gharek scanned the crowd as he and Siora shouldered their way through spots where the humanity huddled thick and pungent. He’d swapped scarves with her, her brown one adorning his head as a wrap while she wore his around her neck and shoulders. It wasn’t much in the way of disguises, and one would-be assassin had already recognized and tried to dispatch him, but there was no help for it. They didn’t have the luxury of time. He needed Manaran’s help now. Hiding out until the city shut its doors and went to bed for the night wasn’t an option. Besides, there was a certain anonymity in streets teeming with other strangers.
The library was a grand affair, the legacy of the Empire’s first emperor, who’d declared himself such when the title of king was no longer grand enough. Soaring columns supported a structure carved of white marble adorned in sculpted figures and reliefs ofthe Empire’s rulers, gods, and other flourishes. It was the work of a thousand laborers, of skilled artisans and sculptors, and decades of time. What it housed inside was even more wondrous. Clusters of students from Domora’s schools that educated the elite gathered on the library steps to debate one topic or another while harried scribes raced up and down the treads, arms full of scrolls, quills, and ink pots. Beggars lined the steps, hands out to coax or guilt passersby into surrendering a coin or two. One approached Gharek then thought better of it under his warning stare.
Siora still held his arm though they were no longer in the midst of crowded streets trying to stay together. She never hesitated to touch him, which he thought strange but had begun to appreciate and anticipate. He regretted the loss of that touch when she let him go at the top of the steps and pivoted to stare open-mouthed at the library’s grand loggia as it came into view. He waited, enjoying her thunderstruck expression as she stared at the impressive architecture, gasping at each new discovery her gaze landed on as she continued to pivot and admire.
“You’ve never been here at all during the time you lived in Domora?”
She didn’t spare him a glance, too enraptured by the library’s dramatic design, only deigned to shrug. “There was never a reason to do so.”
“Can you read?” It wouldn’t be unusual if she couldn’t, especially raised as she was.
Her chin went up in a prideful tilt. “I can, though not as well as some.” She did glance at him then, from the corner of one eye. “They don’t allow beggars into the library, and my time wasn’t myown while I was Estred’s nurse.” She explained the last without resentment.
Finally freed of the library’s spell, she turned fully to Gharek. “What if this librarian friend tells you that what you need to break the Windcry’s wards can only be found in the Maesor?”
He snorted and waved a hand at the colossal doors in front of them that beckoned visitors to enter and behold. “Believe me, if the information isn’t housed somewhere in there, it doesn’t exist. The challenge for us will be convincing Manaran to let us search without telling him too many details, not to mention actually finding such a book or scroll in a vast storehouse of them.”
“What’s to stop him from running off to the new emperor to tell him someone is looking to steal the Windcry?”
It was a reasonable question from an honest person. “Deception isn’t your strength, is it?”
Once more that proud chin went up. “I don’t weep over the lack.”
He reached for her hand again, tucked it into the crook of his elbow, and brought her closer to his side. To other eyes, they were a couple on an outing to visit one of Domora’s landmarks. Her eyebrows lifted briefly, but she didn’t resist. “Trust me,” he whispered near her ear. “I’ll know what to say. This kind of thing was part of my profession as the empress’s henchman.”
“Are you sure they’ll allow us in?” Her clothing looked worse for wear after a chase through the Maesor and Midrigar and sleeping outside on a horse blanket under a willow tree. His garb was in even worse shape than hers.
He waved away her concerns. “Who says I intend to askpermission? We won’t be going through the front doors anyway. I know another way to access these halls.”
She gave him a doubtful look. “Do you know every secret entry and exit in Domora?”
“Yes.”
He was as good as his word, bypassing the main entrance with its gauntlet of guards and territorial scholars, who exercised their own meager power by deciding who among the common folk they deemed worthy enough to cross the threshold into the hallowed interior. Instead he led Siora to the long portico stretching along one side of the library, where a forest of columns cast their diagonal shadows on more students, who ignored the passing of two grubby townspeople.
They reached the back of the building. The library’s builders had wanted the world to marvel at their creation, at least the parts of it visible to most. The back of the building was another matter. Here there were no sculptures or ornamentation, no marble cladding. Only dirty stone, middens, and entrances to the library used by the lower rungs of workers tasked with maintaining it and by the staff who served the librarians and scribes who lived and worked there. Like the students on the elevated portico, the busy staff barely gave them a glance, and those were bored ones. Gharek confidently strode through one of the open doors with Siora in tow. Creeping about made people notice. Acting as if you owned the place did not.
While he’d chosen this route to avoid questions or confrontation, he found new difficulties in coaxing Siora along with him. She paused every few steps once they reached the library’s main hall to stare at the wall nooks, like slots in a gigantic dovecote, thatcovered the surfaces from floor to soaring ceiling and were stuffed with scrolls. Others held books stacked one atop the other or displayed spine out for the browser to read the title.
Were they truly here for a visit, he might enjoy observing her awestruck reactions, but they were here for a specific purpose. Wonderment would have to wait. He tugged her along, avoiding the hall’s center aisles to hug the wall. His destination was a stairwell tucked behind the meeting of two interior walls. Hidden away and unseen by visitors, the master librarians used it to descend from their lofty studies to briefly mingle, then flee once more up the same stairs for their musty sanctuaries.
No guards watched the stairs or stopped them from entering the stairwell. Those who knew of its existence ruled the library and didn’t need permission to use it. Others were of the belief it was sacrosanct and reserved for the near mythical scholars who didn’t just climb the stairs to their chambers but ascended them.