Gharek smiled inwardly at the memory of Manaran’s humble and often self-mocking views of those assumptions. “To those whelps studying at the academies and quoting wisdom they’ve just read to each other, we’re venerable gods with bad teeth and cobwebs in our hair. Just ignore all that nonsense, my boy,” he’d told a young Gharek, who’d gawked at a crowd of the older librarians poring over a large, tattered-looking tome with frayed pages and a strange proclivity to twitch when the sun slanting through the windows in a certain way landed on it. “We’re just gassy old men going blind from reading in bad light.” One day, Gharek thought, he might relay that story to Siora.If you manage to survive Zaredis and his promise to execute you, his inner heckler mocked.
The narrow stairwell wound in a loose coil toward an upperfloor, opening onto a small landing made even smaller by baskets full of scrolls and books stacked there. They covered nearly all the floor space except a slender path leading to a corridor in much the same state. The smell of dust and ink permeated the stale air, and the midsummer heat pulsed in the cramped confines like a heart.
“It’s miserable up here,” Siora said and wiped her brow with her sleeve. “How does anyone work or live without roasting alive in this bread oven?”
“Most of the doors you see lead to storerooms,” he said. “The ones at the end of this hallway branch off and line the back of the library. Those are the rooms the master librarians occupy. They have windows.”
He didn’t mind the heat as much as she did, mostly because the sights and smells of this place reminded him of better days long past, when he’d dreamed of becoming one of those esteemed scholars himself, surrounded by the accumulated knowledge of centuries. Instead he’d grown up to become a soldier and then an assassin. He’d spilled more blood than ink in his lifetime so far.
The hallway branched out to another, then ran perpendicular to it, and Gharek led Siora down one side to a door at the very end. He rapped three times on one of its carved panels and waited. Moments crawled by on shuffling steps, marked by the swirl of dust motes illuminated in the dim light of a single lamp hung from a chain attached to a ceiling joist. Siora shifted restlessly beside him.
“This is a funeral pyre waiting to happen,” she said, pointing to one of the countless baskets of scrolls and then at the lamp. “Maybe we can coax your librarian to chat with us outside.”
Her unease wasn’t without merit. There was nothing here to disturb the lamp’s flame or knock into it, but one small spark inthe windowless corridor falling on what amounted to a wagonload of tinder would start a massive fire. His brief joy at returning to a place of fond memories evaporated, and he rapped harder on the door again, this time with the side of his fist instead of his knuckles.
“Stop that racket, you arsewipe! I’m coming,” a reedy voice snarled from the door’s other side. Siora covered her mouth with her hand to stifle her laughter. She jumped back when the door was suddenly flung open, leaving Gharek with his fist raised again to knock, facing whatever fury confronted them.
A man, as ancient and weathered as cured leather abandoned in the sun, stood on the threshold, glaring at them and holding a quill as if it were a dagger he was about to stab into his visitor’s eye. His scowl turned the wrinkles in his face into trenches. “Go away,” he snapped, the quill’s feather quivering in his grip. “I don’t know how you slipped past the guards downstairs, but you’re not welcome here.” His long beard, gray and as coarse-looking as a horse’s tail, was a matted waterfall cascading down the front of his robes. He made to shut the door and was prevented by Gharek’s hand pushing it open.
“Manaran,” he said, hoping the librarian still had enough of his mental faculties to recognize him. “I need your help.”
The old man released his hold on the door handle before edging farther into the hallway for a closer look at these intruders. He peered at Gharek, cloudy gaze passing over his face and body. A surprised gladness replaced the glare. “Gharek,” he said, the scowl chased away by a broken-tooth smile. “You aren’t dead.”
Gharek shook his head. “Not yet, my friend.” He glanced down the still-empty hallway. “May we come inside?”
Manaran started, then ushered them past him, nodding to Siora, who paused to give him a quick bow.
“He’s not a nobleman,” Gharek whispered to her once they found a place to stand in a chamber even more cluttered than the hallways and stairwell.
She shrugged. “He’s better. He’s a librarian.”
He couldn’t agree more and offered his own shallow bow to the man who’d once given time, patience, and access to the wonders of this place to a boy starved for all three.
Manaran closed the door and barred it before joining them. He pointed to a bench buried under stacks of parchment, frowned, then pointed to another one equally covered. He sighed. “I’d invite you to sit, but there’s no place to do so.”
Gharek chuckled. “It doesn’t matter. We’re here for a very short time.” He was more interested in finding the room’s coolest spot and motioned for Siora to join him next to the chamber’s open window. She made a delighted sound at the whip of a breeze snapping into the room to flutter some of the parchment stacks and send a few leaves scuttling across a large and very messy desk.
Manaran’s look was no less speculative for his squint as he eyed his visitors. “Domora is the last place you should be. If I had abelshafor every person looking to put your head on a pike, I’d be a wealthy man.”
“You’re already a wealthy man,” Gharek replied. Librarians weren’t paid handsome sums of money, but those who reached Manaran’s level of scholarship typically came from wealthy families, ones who offered to act as patrons and made generous donations to the royal library as a way of elevating their name and social standing, not to mention the favor of the reigning monarch. Suchcurrying of favor had been lost on Dalvila, but her predecessors had set great stores by the munificence their courtiers bestowed on the royal library.
The librarian pointed to Siora. “Who is this?”
Gharek could have spent an afternoon trying to explain to Manaran who Siora was or what he was learning she was. Instead he wrapped an arm around her waist to snuggle her against his side in a show of affection. She didn’t resist. “My mistress, Siora.”
Siora blushed under Manaran’s regard, but she didn’t drop her gaze from his. Gharek could almost hear the old man’s thoughts. Where had he found this woman and did she know the reputation of the man she’d taken to her bed when she agreed to become his mistress?
“You could do to dress her better,” Manaran said after several moments of awkward silence.
If only he’d seen her before she’d gotten new clothes. “A fall from grace has made me a beggar myself.”
The other man raised a hoary eyebrow. “I’m not surprised. The fact you’re still alive defies the odds, but you were always a survivor, Gharek.” He picked his way around the obstacle course that was the floor and sat in a chair behind the parchment-strewn desk. “You aren’t here for a social visit, son. What can I do for you?”
“I need help in understanding how a protection ward might be created and how it might be broken.”
“And why would the cat’s-paw need such knowledge?” Manaran’s voice changed, became guarded, and the squinty, half-puzzled expression now held the sharpness of a newly polished blade.
This was the Manaran Gharek remembered best. The man his mother had taken as a lover because of his wit, his intelligence,and his ability to gauge a person’s character in a single glance. It was one of two things Gharek held on to, and reminded himself that while broken and drowning in the muck of his own murderous history, the abyss hadn’t yet swallowed him whole. His daughter still loved him and Manaran still spoke to him. He deserved honesty from Gharek, but an honesty he’d have to parse out from carefully chosen words.