“It’s okay,” I said.
“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you.”
“It’s all right,” I said. It was, in fact, anything but all right, but however I was going to get the information I wanted, it wasn’t going to be here and now.
After a while, I helped her back into her chair. She still kept her head down. In an effort to change the subject, I said, “Tell me something: where do you eat?”
She looked up. “My lord?”
“You, servants. Where do you take your meals?”
“In the kitchen, my lord,” she said, as if I were an idiot, and as if the, well, whatever had just happened hadn’t happened.
I said, “I saw the kitchen. There was no food there. And no table, for that matter.”
“They set up the table before meals.”
“They?”
“Cook and the butter boy and the pantry girl.”
“I didn’t see them.”
“Well, they must have been there. There’s always food at dinnertime.”
“All right,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
She frowned. “Are you hungry, m’lord? I could—”
“No, no. I was just curious. I’m fine.”
“Why would you lie like that, Boss?”
“Shut up, Loiosh.”
“Thank you for talking to me,” I said.
She bowed. “M’lord,” she said. Then, “May I ask you something?”
“Seems fair.”
“Forgive my impertinence, m’lord, but…”
“Go ahead.”
“Your hand. What happened to it?”
I glanced at it. “Oh, yes. I was born that way. Among my people it is a sign of high destiny to be born missing a finger.”
She looked doubtful, but nodded.
“Why do you ask?”
“There’s a tale about—I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s all right. I’m curious. About Easterners?”
She nodded. “That witches have to sacrifice a piece of their body to gain their powers.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry to disappoint, but no. At least, not that I’ve ever heard of. Maybe it’s metaphorical?”
“My lord?”
“Never mind. Thank you again for your help.”
“Of course, m’lord.”
I took a last look around the room, then sketched her a bow and stepped back into the hallway. It continued for a short distance to my right, or I could go left to where I might or might not be back where Zhayin was, no doubt still sitting in his little room with the portrait of himself looking disapproving.
I turned right. The door that was almost directly across the hall was different from the others: it looked heavy, made of some dark wood with intricate carvings: trees, birds, an animal that was probably a vallista. One of these times, I was going to open a door and something would come jumping out with sharp things pointed at me. I mentally shrugged and opened it.
Well, all right, the son of a bitch had a library after all. I’d been starting to doubt it. An odd place: right across from the nursery and next to a bedroom, but at least he had one.
I thought about shutting the door.
Here’s the thing about walking into a library: either you turn around and walk out again, or you figure to spend the next ten hours there. I don’t mean finding some book you’ve never heard of and “just opening it to read the first page,” although there’s that danger too. I mean there just isn’t anything useful to be learned in a library that doesn’t require a reasonably careful examination of what books are there. And they’re books. You have to, like, read the titles at least.
“Loiosh, how long since we’ve eaten anything?”
“A year. Maybe two.”
“That’s what I thought.”
I hesitated, and cursed under my breath. Maybe I could exercise some self-control. I went in.
It was a long room with shelves on the sides and in the back. At a guess, about six rooms of this size could fit into Morrolan’s library, but Morrolan was kind of crazy that way. And in other ways, but never mind. And while I’m no good at estimating numbers of books, as opposed to bottles of wine, there had to be thousands. One thing about the Dragaeran life-span is that it gives them a lot of time for reading. Out of habit, I looked for mirrors and counted three of them, in all corners except the one nearest the door, and all facing into the room.
The first thing to check in a library is the arrangement. I knew the first part right away: things Zhayin felt were most important were in his study. The books shelved here were everything else. The first thing I saw were novels, most of them historical. He seemed fascinated by the middle Eleventh Cycle: Issola, Tsalmoth, and Vallista reigns. To be clear, I mean contemporary novels set in that period, not written then; you’d need to be a scholar to read anything written that far back. I’d tried once, and couldn’t even figure out the alphabet. I kept going. My initial guess, that it was the Vallista reigns that fascinated him, was disproved by the next section, which were all books set in the late Fifteenth Cycle, in the Jhegaala and Athyra reigns—again, contemporary writers doing historical romances. A little more looking convinced me that he’d divided up his books according to the period where they were set; I couldn’t find any other division.
The other side of the room had more novels of different periods, and, finally, the non-fiction, which consisted of about as many books as were in his study, and with similar titles; also that many again devoted to necromancy. As I was scanning them, one title jumped out at me. It was a thick but short volume bound in cheap, cracked leather. The faded gold lettering on the spine said Bending Time and Space: Studies in the Halls of Judgment.
Well. Yes, that was certainly interesting.
I pulled it out and studied it a bit before I opened it. It certainly showed signs of having been read; all the corners were frayed, and the gilding on the edges had been almost entirely worn off. I tried a trick Kiera had once shown me, of holding it in my left hand and seeing where it naturally fell open to determine if there were any parts that he had read repeatedly, but it fell open to the first flyleaf; maybe you needed a special touch.
Ever been working carefully to figure something out, and then in an instant had a big piece of the puzzle fall into place in the time it took to draw a breath? That’s what happened when my eyes fell on a single sentence. It was written on the flyleaf in a fine, precise, artistic hand with an excellent quill, and it said, To Tethia, with love on Kieron’s Day, from Papa.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. Then I checked another half dozen books, and found Tethia’s name in another. Then I checked a few more and found something even more conclusive: another name had been crossed out, and Tethia’s had been written in. In this one, the handwriting was still precise but more artistic, with flourishes and long tails, an elegant use of the way the fountain pen can control the thickness of the line. No, I won’t set up as a handwriting expert, but you pick up a little bit of everything in this business.
I looked around the library again, as if seeing it for the first time. And reconsidered the bedroom I’d just been in, and how bedroom, library, and nursery were all together, as if this particular part of the manor had been set aside for first a child, then, when the child grew, her further needs. I chuckled at myself: I’d become so used to nothing in the place making sense that I hadn’t noticed when, just for a moment, something did.