“Okay, door, don’t fuck with me,” Rose whispered as she reached beneath her cushion to get one of the surprises she’d brought along. The coil of wire hadn’t been easy to come by. It was a long braid of gold, silver, and copper. Rose searched along the crack between the door and the wall. In the end she had to take a candle down from the wall to get a proper look, but she found the spot where the metal of the door was linked to the metal in the frame. That slim wisp of silver (if she’d known that she could have paid much less for this damned cable) that vanished into a hole in the frame. It took her upwards of a full minute or two to get the wire looped over and wedged under the metal on the door side as well as on the frame side, but she finally had it in there solidly. She took a deep breath and opened the door inward.
It opened almost silently and there seemed to be no alarm or flash of light. Whatever the enchantment on the door was meant to do, her wire had fooled it into thinking that the line hadn’t been broken. And the wire gave her plenty of room to open the door all the way. She had to carefully lift it above her head as she pushed her way into the library proper, but once that was done, she was in and not much worse for wear, save for some tension and a lingering headache.
The Finean Algwion Memorial Library was better lit than the rest of the building so far. Most of the lights were a soft arcane sort of brightness: small globes that illuminated much more evenly than candles would have, but not as harshly as daylight. The walls were almost entirely dark wood bookshelves stuffed with books (or at least the spines of books). Some of those walls had breaks (likely for some practical purpose that was beyond Rose) and these often had paintings, expensive spring-and-chain wall clocks, or closed cabinets. She could see small tables with one or two chairs near them every so often but most of the books were in floor to ceiling stacks which obscured her view of most of the room. All the same, she knew more or less what she was looking for.
That was the good news. The …. other news was that the books were not labeled in any way that she could make sense of. The bookshelves seemed to have small plaques sporting a letter and number code every so often, but they were entirely nonsense to her. No worries, though. She could read most of the titles, so she’d just go till she found something in the same region.
Stars and Fungi. Okay, that’s not it, next section. Pimsui Secretions: colors and uses. No, and also gross. Moving on. Across the room and past a clock that seemed to be ticking too slowly she found A Bounty of Maps. She wasn’t even sure that was proper language. Across from that near a small table was Sects and Sigils. Jackpot! Though, on balance, she would have gone with a different title. But here was the small collection of books on cults and their symbols, practices, and histories. She wondered if the mages would have considered these people friendly rivals or antisocial wankers. She flipped through a few books, not bothering to put the unwanted books back. She was really hoping that something useful could be found on the lower shelves, because while she had no doubt that she could either use her powers to drop a few books down or use some clever leverage to get herself up there, she’d have preferred not.
It turned out that The Origins of Cult Symbols had what she wanted in chapter four, entitled “tattoos and clothing sigils”. A sort of a swirl on the right side with a stylized tall triangle on the left side. The swirl evoked the feeling of an eye or the empty hold of a skull while the triangle felt like nothing so much as a triangle, but despite that the whole thing felt like a face without looking much like a face. She drew the crimson fabric bookmark into that page and closed the book. Moving to slide it under her cushion, but that was, of course, when she heard “Hey!” A sharp feminine voice from the door she’d come in. She spun the chair without even thinking.
Before her stood a woman, an alarmed expression on her face. She was wearing a nicer version of the clothes that stinky had been in. Hers were sky blue over top of grey leggings and an undershirt. The alarmed expression on her face was almost frozen here, unmoving. Rose intuitively reached for a blast, drawing her focus to her third eye, but as she did, she heard a second voice behind her.
<Chada!>
And then she heard no more.
…
…
Well, at least until she started to wake up.
As Rose became aware of herself again, the first thing she noticed, curiously, was how much better her head felt. It didn’t feel great, mind, but it felt better than it had when she’d gone down. There were sounds around her like bubbles being drug across sharp stones against their will. As she became aware of new things – she was sitting, she was tied up – the voices started to come together as her vision did the same.
She was still in the library, or a room that looked very much like it. She was tied to one of the small chairs seen before. Her own chair was against the wall roughly ten feet from her, but given the bodies between her and it, it might as well have been imaginary. Its lovely dark wood and strong wheels would do her no good until things changed a bit. Which was for the good because she wasn’t entirely able to focus yet.
“Well, what in the name of the mad gods of the south was she doing in here? Is she some sort of thief? A spy? And how under the skies did she even find this place?” The voice came from a woman, but she only knew that because it was a female voice. The shape wasn’t entirely in focus yet, though it had browns and blues and magentas on it. She sounded confident.
A male voice responded. “Not sure, but she was doing research, ma’am.” He was the blue blob beside her. Rose blinked a few times, and the shapes came into focus. The man was, in fact, dressed in blue robes, with a shapely hood (the first one she’d seen up over a head). Behind him stood Stinky, watching Rose with a warily with a sour look on his face. When her eyes settled on his, he flinched. Rose gave him a half smile and a wink. It was a poor smile and an even worse wink, but it carried the message. The boy now seemed unsure about his rage. Should he have more? Less? He was clearly a little inexperienced with rage.
Meanwhile, the older woman turned to the man in blue. She was older than the rest: grey hair in a bun. She honestly looked more like a librarian and less like a mage than anyone else she’d seen. Her robe was made of the browns and blues and magentas that Rose had gotten the impression of, but she now saw that it was worn over nightclothes and below a set of half-moon glasses. “Research,” she said. “Why not just ask – I see. Well, what was so important that you thought we wouldn’t tell you,” she asked, turning to Rose, seemingly unsurprised to find her awake. The woman watched her expectantly. Rose had just a moment to reflect on how maybe she should have paid for a lookout from the guild like they’d offered.
Rose said nothing, rather loudly, through a clenched jaw. The man in blue handed over the book. For a moment there was a mild surprise upon the older woman’s stately face before her mouth turned down into a sneer. “I see. A cultist.” She said the word with the sort of disgust usually reserved for a garnish that turned out to be a turd. “Call the guard and hand her over.” The woman turned, dismissing Rose entirely, to leave the room.
Rose couldn’t help herself. “I’m not a fucking cultist!” was out of her mouth before she even knew she was about to say the words. She almost covered her mouth with her hands but caught herself. But the woman had stopped. She turned, seemingly pleased with herself.
“You don’t say.” She ambled toward Rose casually. “So, what are you then, girl? This seems unlikely reading material for a thief and a little useless for a spy, but you have invaded this place and assaulted my staff.” She let the rest of the threat hang unspoken. But Rose heard it well enough. If she didn’t like her answer, she could hand her over to the guards. Rose knew that if she talked to the guards about the mages here, that was as likely to be a death sentence for her as not.
Rose took a moment to take stock of her options. She could blast the woman. Assuming she was as easy as Stinky, that would still leave three mages, one of whom had already handed her her own ass that night. On her best day, she couldn’t rewrite enough stuff to make a big enough hole in the floor, and even if she could, she’d just fall down into whatever was under this room, which probably wouldn’t be better. She doubted these folks would be impressed with lights from her eyes. She had a small collection of firecrackers in a bag on her chair, but it was against the wall. So she was, it seemed, awash in options. Before she could open her mouth to speak, the woman cut in.
“Let’s start with something smaller. How did you find this place. You’re not local, I think, so someone told you to come here, and I will know who.” Not a question. Rose had not promised her sources silence, but she knew that these sorts of deals carried that sort of implication. Then again, she didn’t plan on coming back here, so…
“The guild. A man named Dravin, I think. I didn’t get any other name. I paid him in gold for information about where I could find books like that.” Rather, he thought Rose had paid him heaps. She wasn’t sure how long the rocks in that bag would stay gems, but not long enough for her to be able to use that contact ever again, surely. Worth it, though. “He knew about you. All he gave me was the location and he said it was quiet after the third bell. And to plan for wizards.” The woman looked like she didn’t enjoy that answer. She gestured to the man in blue robes who nodded and began scribbling something down on a wax tablet.
“And you? Why break in here to steal information from us?”
Rose didn’t want to talk about that, but she was slowly coming to the same realization that the woman opposite her had come to before she woke up. It was talk or nothing. “The book has information I need. One of the cults in there …” she grimaced and said, “They took something from me. I have to get it back. They’re about four days ahead of me, so I didn’t have time to ask nicely and I figured if you said no, you’d double security so, you know. I figured you wouldn’t miss one book.”
The woman took a long time to respond. Rose thought maybe she wasn’t going to say anything, but she grabbed a second chair and set it down primly opposite the one Rose was tied to. She sat and put her hands just as primly in her lap. “You say something, but I think I heard a different word in there. Who was it they took?” Shit. When Rose didn’t immediately respond she added, “I’ve already decided not to call the guard, girl, but if you tell me the truth and apologize to my people, maybe we can talk terms. So far you haven’t done anything that can’t be fixed.”
Rose had been lied to many times in her life. She’d been lied to repeatedly by her mother. She’d been lied to by a man from the church who told her that he could help extract the evil spirits from her body. She’d been lied to by bandits and thieves and merchants and bartenders and even once an animal trainer for a traveling circus on her way here. This woman wasn’t lying to her. Rose found that intolerably rude.
“My mother. A man took my mother and left behind a sigil that’s in that book. I’ve been following him for a while and I got close about a week ago. They passed just north of here, but I came south to get the book because I need to know who he is and why he wants her.”
The room hadn’t been loud before, but the silence that followed made the breathing and rustling of robes (why do they wear robes, anyway?) sound like thunder.
“Prys, help her back in her chair. We should move this conversation to the kitchen.”
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