˚₊‧✩ ˚₊‧꒰ა ʚིᵋº̣̥͙̣̥͙ᵌɞྀ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ✩‧₊˚
Hayden Wolffe arrived at the library at the seventh bell and went straight to the eastern wing and stopped in the entrance of the neglected wing and stood very still.
The lamp was burning higher than he had left it.
He had trimmed it himself two days ago, the way he always did, keeping it low enough to be unobtrusive but present enough to work by. It was not low now. Someone had turned it up, used it, and not turned it back down.
Someone had been here.
He did not move for a moment. He looked at the shelves, the gap on the third shelf from the bottom, the catalogue log to the left of the gap. Everything appeared to be in its place. Nothing had been removed, nothing obviously disturbed. But the lamp did not lie.
He stepped inside and checked the correspondence log. It was exactly as he had left it, the letter still pressed deep in the binding, invisible unless you knew to look. He checked the shelves on either side. He checked the floor for anything dropped, any mark that might tell him something about who had stood here and when.
Nothing.
Whoever had been here knew how to move through a space without leaving traces. That was not a casual visitor. That was someone practiced.
He sat down at the small table and thought about this carefully.
The princess had taken the scroll. He had watched her walk out of the library with it under her arm, composed and quick, and he had stood in the neglected wing for a full minute afterward just processing the fact that he had handed the most important document in Nephorian history to a member of the Royal Family and was now wondering whether that had been spectacularly brave or spectacularly stupid.
He had landed, eventually, on necessary. Which was not quite the same as either.
But the princess had left with the scroll. She had not been back yet, or if she had, she had come and gone before he arrived this morning. Which meant whoever had turned the lamp up was someone else entirely.
He pulled out his journal. He opened it to a clean page.
Someone else knows about this wing, he wrote. The lamp was turned up. They were here recently, possibly last night or early this morning. They did not take anything and did not leave anything. They were careful.
He stared at the page.
Either they are watching to see who comes here, or they came looking for something specific and did not find it because the scroll is no longer here.
He wrote: Either way, we have a problem.
He was still looking at that sentence when he heard footsteps in the Military Archives.
He closed the journal. He did not move.
The footsteps were even and unhurried, coming along the main aisle between the campaign records. Not rushing. Not sneaking. Just walking, the way someone walks when they know where they are going and are not concerned about being seen getting there.
They stopped outside the archway of the neglected wing.
Hayden looked up.
Rex Marius stood under the low archway with his coat half-buttoned and his hair suggesting he had dressed in a hurry and an expression on his face that meant he had something to say and had been composing it on the walk over.
Hayden exhaled.
"You cannot just appear in doorways like that," he said.
"I knocked on your rooms this morning and you were already gone," Rex said, stepping inside. "Mistress Calla told me you'd come straight here." He looked around the neglected wing, at the shelves, at the lamp. "Someone's been here."
"I know."
"The lamp."
"I know, Rex."
Rex sat down on the other stool and looked at the lamp for a moment. "Paion found something," he said. "That is why I came. She sent me because she could not leave the workroom, she has a full morning of patients." He reached into his coat and produced a folded piece of paper. "She found a record. Zephyrine Callas."
Hayden took the paper and unfolded it.
It was a copy, made in Paion's small precise handwriting, of what appeared to be an entry from an old personnel register. He read it quickly.
*Zephyrine Callas. Junior Archivist, Royal Council. Appointed in the forty-third year of the Founding Era. Resigned in the forty-seventh year. No reason given for resignation. Subsequent records: none.*
"She resigned four years after the exile," Hayden said.
"Four years after she wrote the scroll," Rex said. "Whatever she saw in that council chamber, she stayed four more years and then she left and disappeared from the official record entirely." He leaned forward. "Paion thinks she did not just resign. She thinks she was pushed out. Made to disappear quietly."
"Because she knew."
"Because she knew and someone figured out she knew." Rex looked at him. "Which means someone in the palace, four hundred years ago, was already trying to bury this. And Hayden." He paused. "The lamp."
Hayden looked at it.
"Someone is still trying," Rex said.
The neglected wing was very quiet around them. Outside the thick library walls, Nephoria was going about its morning, entirely unaware that two young men were sitting in a forgotten corner of its Great Library working out how much danger they were in.
"There is something else," Hayden said.
He told Rex about the princess. About the meeting in the neglected wing the previous afternoon, the scroll changing hands, the question she had asked: *how much time do we have.*
Rex listened without interrupting, which was rare enough that Hayden noted it.
When he finished Rex was quiet for a moment.
"You gave the scroll to the Crown Princess of Nephoria," Rex said.
"Yes."
"Voluntarily."
"It seemed like the right decision."
Rex opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "I mean," he said. "I did say we should think about someone inside the palace."
"You did."
"I was thinking more along the lines of a sympathetic council member or possibly a junior advisor."
"I know."
"Not the actual princess."
"Rex."
"I'm not saying it was wrong," Rex said. "I'm saying it was extremely large." He pressed both hands flat on the table. "Is she trustworthy?"
Hayden thought about Eurydice in the lamplight of the neglected wing. The steady hands. The question she had asked, not whether the scroll was real, not whether it could be explained away, but how much time do we have. The nod she had given before she walked out, the nod of someone accepting a weight they intended to carry properly.
"I think so," he said. "Yes."
"You think so."
"I am fairly certain."
Rex looked at the ceiling briefly. "Fairly certain," he repeated. "We are fairly certain the Crown Princess of Nephoria is on our side." He looked back down. "This is fine. This is completely fine."
"Are you convincing me or yourself?"
"Both," Rex said honestly. "Equally."
Despite everything, Hayden almost smiled.
"We need to tell Paion," he said. "And then we need to meet with the princess. All of us." He looked at the lamp still burning higher than he had left it. "Soon. Before whoever turned that lamp up comes back."
Rex followed his gaze.
"Yeah," he said quietly. The usual energy had settled into something more serious. "Yeah, I think soon is right."
They left the neglected wing together and walked back through the Military Archives and out into the main hall where Mistress Calla was already at her desk, already watching them with that expression she sometimes had, the one Hayden could not entirely read.
He nodded to her as he passed.
She nodded back.
Her eyes stayed on him until he was through the door.
˚₊‧✩ ˚₊‧꒰ა ʚིᵋº̣̥͙̣̥͙ᵌɞྀ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ✩‧₊˚