There. He grabbed hold before the pages could flop past and wipe away what he’d seen. There.
That Indira woman called again.
A smile spread across Daniel’s face, grim and ruthless. He’d found it.
Settling himself lower and pulling the book into his arms, he leaned over the words.
I thought I’d been firm enough after our last conversation, but she is proving to be nothing if not persistent. Again, she opened with stories about her mythical Library. Ridiculous. She contacts me now, when my hunt is so close to reaching fruition? It’s a distraction. She needs help, she says. She wants to mend the rift between her renegades and our faction, she says.
I will not be so easily fooled. I’ve walked that road before. My past days were wasted—squandered—by chasing after our idiot brethren and that creation. Now, they would have me rejoin the search? And they ask for our resources in their idiotic venture?
No. They left us behind, those centuries past. The Booklenders chose their own path, and it isn’t the responsibility of the ones they abandoned to clean up their mess now. Even now, I cannot lie. My heart leaps just a little at the thought that it might be within reach again. The old temptations are reborn so easily.
But I am older than I was back then, and wiser. They claim to have a lead on the current Librarian? Ridiculous. They’re fools, and a fool’s advice is worth nothing at all. Even if they knew something, even if by some chance of fate they happened across a true opportunity, the Librarian would never be caught so easily. They would simply vanish, disappearing again, and all of the effort I expended in the chasing would be squandered.
We’ve already committed to our own plans. I won’t allow us to become distracted, for our focus to be fractured in too many directions to be meaningful. Only this past month, I’ve located someone I’m sure is in the faceless bitch’s employ. I can’t turn back now.
Rickard disagrees, I think. He’s been polite, but unusually firm on the subject. Stubbornness is a good quality, and admirable in the heir, but this matter isn’t for him to decide. He has neither the knowledge nor the experience to see the complete picture. I can’t allow him to become distracted with the legends of prior years. He’s a curious man. That’s why I made him the heir, after all. If I were to tell him the truth, he would be consumed by it, and I need his mind back on matters of actual importance.
The only way to gain such experience is to live it, and if he is curious, I must crush that curiosity. In a decade or two, when the grimoire becomes his, he can have the truth, along with my wisdom to properly interpret it.
Until then, I’ve assigned him to look into the Booklenders’ request, and given him a small detachment. Let him learn the truth of his own folly, while I turn my eyes to the Legion, as is proper.
He will understand better once this is past. Of this, I am sure.
That was it. The handwritten entries came to an end—and when Daniel turned the page, he found only blank paper.
Was that all Alexandria knew on the matter? Daniel leaned back on his heels, his mind racing. This Madis fellow knew about the Library. He hadn’t been surprised, by either Alexandria or by Indira. If anything, he seemed annoyed. By her request?
Maybe he could use that.
Even as the journal entries circled in his thoughts, though, a deeper question rose up beneath them. The book was blank—but they were in the middle of a bloodbath with these demis, that Daniel could only assume had come from Rickard’s detachment. Had Rickard not called home to his superior?
Or was it that Alexandria simply didn’t know what had happened since he fell asleep? He tightened his grip on the journal, a sheen of sweat soaking through his palms. He’d always assumed Alexandria was all-knowing, all-seeing.
Was this a blind spot?
Daniel shook his head, his expression hardening, and put the Madis book back on the shelf. He couldn’t dwell on it. He couldn’t let himself start to doubt.
He’d read Indira’s book, and Olivia’s, and those of their attackers. With Madis’s out of the way, he had only one text left.
Leaning against the bookshelf, he lifted the book labeled Rickard. This time, there was no messing around with checking through the front contents. He just turned the book over, heading straight to the back pages, and flipped through until at last, he saw the name he was looking for.
Taking a deep breath, Daniel started to read again.
That Booklender lady called again. Miss Indira, I think. That’s the third time in as many days, and she only talks to Madis.
He won’t tell me much about what she says. And it’s not that he’s angry with her. He just sounds...disinterested. As though she’s bothering him, each and every time. But from the little I’ve been able to glean from old records and the bits he lets on…I can’t help myself. The splinter faction, gone for so many years? Chasing after a focus that carries all of humanity’s learnings and wisdom within it?
I’m curious.
Madis has been firm. We’re not getting involved. And on a surface level, I can see where he’s coming from. Truly. He’s responsible for looking after the whole guild, and it would be absurd to abandon everything we’ve been working for over the last decade. He says she’s nothing but a desperate fool, that the legends she spouts are myth and nothing else.
Is that true, though? I know that I shouldn’t doubt him—and I don’t doubt him, not really—but at the same time...a focus that passes itself down from hand to
