“I can do that.”
“A big box please.”
“Always.”
“Make it two.”
“If it pleases you.”
“Thank you, I’ll be back soon.”
—
The library was on the western side of the Keep, past the great veranda and the clock, in the business district. It housed the courthouse, the warden offices, and the schoolrooms.
The courthouse was at the forefront of the building, with whitestone statues of the founding four wardens standing watch beside the large oak doors. The wardens had led the first group of citizens to the shores of the empire, while the world beyond was claimed by fire from the sky: the Ending Fire. All that survived was in the hull of their ships. The faces of the statues had been rubbed smooth by those who passed them by, and now they were white shadows of the people they once were.
Anoor continued up the stairs, where she was greeted by the familiar smells of books and ink.
“Ah, Miss Elsari, I was going to send this to your chambers—the latest zine’s just landed. And oh, it’s a real good one. I won’t give it away but Souz ends up married to both men, one of them finds out when she’s in bed with the other. She then gets pregnant but it’s neither of their children. Can you believe it? I won’t ruin the ending but it doesn’t end happy with the baby dead and all and Abena back on the case…”
“Hello, Bisma, how are you?”
When the librarian grinned, his eyebrows did the smiling for him: they lifted his features up toward his afro hair. His hair was still dark despite his age, but his face was as weather-worn as a sun-dried tomato. “Oh, doing well, doing well.”
“Thank you for the zine, how much do I owe you?” Anoor didn’t often handle money, but she could send Gorn up later.
“Don’t worry, this one was worth it, especially that scene in the cemetery, the way Abena ends up fighting both of them and stealing their wallets. Anyway, I’ll let you read it before I spill the whole plot.”
Anoor laughed, “Thank you, Bisma.”
“Choice Day coming up, eh?” He nodded toward her bag full of books.
“Yes, I was actually hoping to brush up on my history before making my decision.”
“Aho, leaning toward knowledge then?”
She gave him a nonchalant shrug.
“What are you looking for, particularly?”
“I’m interested in any of the earliest recordings about the continent, maps, details on the people who once lived here, maybe even about the Ending Fire?”
He frowned. “I see.” He scratched his wispy beard, “I’ll be as honest as the tidewind’s wrath, there isn’t much in the way of history here. We have a few early texts but nothing that’ll tell you much beyond what you’ve already been taught in school. You’d be better off trying the warden library. Why don’t you ask your mother to get you in?” The warden library was off limits to everyone except the wardens themselves and maybe the odd trusted adviser. It wasn’t Bisma’s fault he didn’t know Anoor didn’t fall into that category.
“Ah, thank you, Bisma. I might just do that…another time.”
His eyes crinkled with the wisdom of other people’s stories. “Anything we do have will be on the third stack, second row.”
“Thank you, Bisma.”
Anoor took the zine from his outstretched hand and made her way through the library. The public library was rarely used anymore; the wardens had no interest in its upkeep and so the quality of the books within had never been all that great. Embers were given the texts they needed to learn from in their classes, and anything beyond that was deemed unnecessary. Anoor was one of the few people who frequented the library, and even then, that was mostly to collect her zines from Bisma.
It was a claustrophobic room, a forgotten corner of the Keep, with too many books and too little space. The bookshelves were made from an assortment of materials, some rubber wood, others oak; a few of the shelves were even made from crumbling limestone. All had to be greased every mooncycle with peppermint oil to ward off the cockroaches who loved to scuttle between the tomes. Anoor avoided the library on that day; besides the smell that burned her nostrils, the fleeing cockroaches were enough to give her nightmares.
She found the history section and selected three of the oldest volumes there: Masters at Work, The Soil We Toil, and A Geography of the Empire. They weren’t very thick books, and inspecting the spines, she thought they looked like they’d never been opened. She took a seat in the reading station around the corner, which was wholly unoccupied. A plume of dust wafted from the books as she dropped them onto the table. And then she withdrew from her bag the main reason she was in the library in the first place: the assassin’s map and the small flourish in the corner that looked like land.
—