Chapter Seven
The next day, after lugging supplies and new holdings into the outer chambers of the Archive Recondite since lunchtime, Druadaen finally slipped back into the reading room. Only one researcher was still in the Archive: the aging court scholar who had been sent, or at least funded, by the Orchid Throne of Saqqaru. Scribes in the various wings and collections of the Archive had been speculating on the purpose of his visit for months, some whispering that he had traveled here at the behest of the Most Serene Empress Reconcilera herself. The fellow was even now moving another armful of codices and scrolls to his study chamber. Since the small rooms had been purposely built to block sound and were considerably taller than they were wide, they were more commonly called by a sardonic nickname: oubliettes.
Druadaen started across the wide reading room toward the burdened fellow, called in a low voice, “Honored sir, may I help you with—?”
“Hsst! Hssssssssst!” the Head Facilitator nearly spat at him. “They are meeting! Have care or I shall report you!”
For what? Druadaen wanted to ask. Doing my job? But he only whispered, “Apologies. I have been elsewhere most of the day.” That elicited what might have been a conciliated grunt from the Head Facilitator. “Who is meeting?”
The Facilitator sighed and looked up from the codex open before him. “The honored Master Archivist has been closeted with the Pretor that the Legion has detailed to oversee our security: Alcuin IV.”
“The grandson of the Propretor Princeps? Here?”
The Facilitator looked up testily at Druadaen’s amazed tone. “It is not so unusual,” he objected haughtily. He firmly closed the tome before him: a compendium of all known records and references pertaining to an obscure folk dance practiced by a long-vanished people. “We do important work here,” he sniffed.
From the other side of the reading room, someone cleared their throat. He looked; the aged Saqqari scholar was nodding and waving him over. Druadaen headed in that direction, bowed as he came close, but the wizened fellow gestured for him to follow into his oubliette—the largest that communicated directly with the reading chamber.
As he entered, the Saqqari rounded on him. “You have done an admirable job finding all the tomes I requested. All but one, that is.”
“Yes, sir. Apologies, sir. I discovered that it is not in the main holdings of the Archive Recondite but is part of the Reserved Collection.”
The fellow smiled. “You are diligent. And you are correct. The tome is indeed in the Reserved Collection.”
Druadaen frowned. “Then why did you send me to find it, sir?”
The Saqqari’s smile became shrewd. “Tell me: Have you ever been down into the Reserved Collection?”
“No, sir. But I have wanted to see it for many years.”
“Well, ‘many years’ is a matter of personal context, my young friend. Now, do you remember the subject of the tome I requested?”
“Yes, sir.” A strange question, since he had just been asked to find it this morning. “It is a very old tome about the Great Beasts,” Druadaen answered. “Although the author used the word direkynde instead.” Which was an improbably archaic term for various large, rare, and usually ravenous creatures, the most legendary of which were dragons.
The Saqqari bobbed. “You are correct. One day, you should read it. So, since you could not be sent for it, what became of my request for the volume?”
“It had to be retrieved by Master Archivist Shaananca herself, since the Head Facilitator was out of the Archive when you submitted your request. But she is still conferring with Pretor Alcuin, so I cannot bring it to you immediately.”
He smiled. “I quite understand. You need not rush.” His smile became a grin and grew shrewd again. “Besides, I am in no great haste to see it.”
Druadaen hoped his smile hid his profound puzzlement as he bowed out of the room. “Still, sir, I shall see if the meeting is over.”
He entered the corridor leading to Shaananca’s outer receiving room and beyond it, the vault that was purportedly the entrance to the Reserved Collection. The two doglegs he had to navigate were supposedly there as a sound barrier, but to Druadaen’s eye, they also looked to be defense points that would prove easy for a small number of defenders to hold against a much greater number of attackers.
He inspected the walls as he emerged from the second one, searching for other features that would confirm or disprove his conjecture, vaguely aware that he could hear voices through the open door that led into Shaananca’s rooms. He was still mulling over the construction of the second dogleg when he heard a male voice finishing a statement: “—no indication that the other night’s attack was related to the one which orphaned him almost nine years ago.”
“I am relieved to hear it,” answered Shaananca through a sigh.
Druadaen froze, both his body and mind. They are talking about me. Why? Should I back away? No! If I’m heard, who knows what trouble that might make?
But by that time, the conversation had moved well past the point that had stunned him into immobility.
“—that attacked the docks two nights ago were unquestionably from Tsost-Dyxos.” That term for the attackers—which, elided, produced “S’Dyxos”—had fallen out of routine use centuries ago. It had been that long since there had been anything other than colonial skirmishes between the two nations.
“And their sudden disappearance?” Shaananca asked.
“It wasn’t mancery,” Alcuin’s voice replied after a pause.
“I didn’t suppose it was,” her voice answered calmly.
“Well, most did. After all that smoke shot up and they were suddenly gone, you can imagine the talk. Before we could announce that we’d found their armor floating in the water—unclasped and without any sign of blood—the rumors had started. And once kindled, they spread like a grassfire.”
Shaananca’s voice was mild…which Druadaen knew was often her precursor to springing a rhetorical trap. “And once the Tsost-Dyxoi were submerged, how did they get out of the bay without being seen? There were certainly enough of our boats crisscrossing those waters.”
Alcuin sighed. “That part of their escape—ironically, the part that hasn’t set the wheels of the rumor mills spinning—is the part that did involve mancery. Or at least alchemy. I’m told either could have allowed them to breathe underwater, or not need to do so for some time.”
“More likely the latter,” Shaananca answered, “but not so long that they could have strolled along the bottom of the bay and so, to the sea.”
When Alcuin spoke again, he was clearly restraining profound frustration. Anger, too. “Well, I shall not solve this mystery before I depart, that much is clear. At least their infiltration from the trade quarter was straightforward; no mysteries there.”
“And I shall discover the means whereby those on the dock escaped. Certainly before you return,” Shaananca answered.
“You sound very confident, Master Archivist.”
Druadaen heard the small smile in Shaananca’s voice. “Young Alcuin, Tsost-Dyxoi may be meticulously stealthy when approaching a target, but their tidiness upon departure is typically quite minimal.” A pause. Then: “When do you depart for Saqqaru?”
Dark laughter. “You weren’t informed?”
“Why would I be?”
“Well, you and Grandfather seem to coordinate on all such matters directly. And privately. Take the recent appeal you made to him concerning this boy-hero’s upcoming assignment. By the time I heard about it today, it was already on the desk of the Archpretor of Legions.”
Druadaen blinked. They’re talking about me again?
“I would not have sent word at all, had it not been for the events of two nights ago. Now, additional considerations are warranted.”
Alcuin nodded. “Very well; they shall enter our deliberations, I assure you.” As he finished speaking, he also began walking.
Druadaen braced himself in anticipation of being discovered, but then realized that Alcuin was not yet exiting but moving to pick up objects: probably helmet, shield, and weapon. Starting with one very long backward step, Druadaen reversed down the hall as quickly and quietly as he could.
He was hard at work, gathering scrolls left in the various oubliettes when Shaananca and Alcuin finally passed through the reading room on their way to the funicular platform. Shaananca reentered a moment after the pulleys began groaning, closed the doors, and then smiled brightly at the Head Facilitator. “Lanaral,” she said, “I wonder if you would be so kind as to locate the restricted papers on the slaying of Alcuin III? You will find them under the title ‘The Steppney Inquest.’”
The Head Facilitator murmured compliance and disappeared through the door that led to the Reserved Collection. Druadaen looked after him wistfully…
“Druadaen!”
He started, dropped the refuse he’d collected from the oubliettes.
Before he could reply, Shaananca speared him with her eyes. “You heard nothing. Do you understand?” She hadn’t used that tone with him in years.
“I understand.” He didn’t even consider denying he’d been outside her office, listening.
Shaananca’s stare was unwavering. “You heard nothing,” she repeated.
Ah. “Apologies, Master Archivist, but I do not know what you are referring to.”
She nodded. “I think I can smell your dinner being prepared.” His dormitory was over a mile away. “And just beyond, unless I’m much mistaken, I can hear your bed calling to you.”
He barely heard her last words; the door to the funicular platform was already closing behind him.
* * *
Two weeks after the S’Dyxan attack had been thwarted, Druadaen found himself slowly mounting the stairs to the Archive’s cupola, frowning as he did. If word of his deeds had been made known to the high and the mighty, they had evidently kept it among themselves. The detection of the infiltrators and the tactics leading to their summary defeat remained unattributed.
But the lack of recognition was merely an annoyance. Yes, it would have been nice to have been publicly praised for his actions that night, but Druadaen’s focus—indeed, his world—had narrowed to a single concentrated point: assignment to the Legions.
He reached the top of the stairs, looked over dawn-lit Tlulanxu. It had become his home. But it was long past time for him to leave it and start the next chapter in his life. Maybe today.
But when the day came to a close, he was no closer to that departure. Instead, since becoming the most senior assistant, he was the one entrusted to perform the last tasks of the day, which included a final check and cleaning of the oubliettes. Somehow, despite being at the bottom of the funicular’s long, tubelike shaft, there was still an astounding amount of dirt and rubbish that daily found its way down into the Archive Recondite. Druadaen suspected mancery: an old curse left behind by some nasty-spirited old trickster who had been slighted or thwarted by an assistant. Unfortunately, whatever the spell might be, it had shown no sign of relenting in the nine years that he had worked there.
Druadaen’s final task was to secure the Archive itself, which involved waiting for the two guards posted there during the night. They officially witnessed him secure the many vaults and concealed repositories that held artifacts and codices so ancient and (to him) mysterious that they were tempting targets for thieves and mantics alike. Typically, this job fell to Shaananca, but she had been called away a week ago—in the field with a legion, from the sound of it. Lanaral had left a few days later to fulfill his annual work-tithe on a fishing smack that plied the shallows where Dunarra’s east coast touched the Nyrthule Sea. So on this day, when he heard the cables of the funicular creak into taut readiness and then squeal and grumble, he hastened to complete his tasks: apparently the guards were a quarter hour early.
After checking that everything was in order, he went out to the platform—and discovered Shaananca smiling at him as she descended from the car. “No greeting?” she teased.
“I’ll have to come up with a new one. The one I exchange with the guards is…unsuitable for present company.”
She chuckled as they walked into the reading room. “Things seem in fine order.”
“Yes, and I am ready to depart.”
She nodded, looking around appreciatively. “You are indeed done for the day.”
“Well, yes, I am, but I was referring to my time in Tlulanxu. But I’m still waiting for assignment.”
“Yes,” she said, “I know.”
“You do?”
She nodded and handed him a scroll. He had a faint peripheral impression that her face was set in one of its inscrutable masks, but he didn’t stop to make sure; he was too busy carefully breaking the wax seal and then unfurling it so that he might save it unblemished for posterity.
He read the document. He frowned and read it again.
He looked up. “This must be a mistake?”
Shaananca’s eyes were distant, but he could see pain in them. Pain and knowing and other things for which he had no name. “No,” she answered eventually. “It is not a mistake.”
“I…my assignment…I have been made an archivist?” he roared.
She nodded.
He discovered he was panting, harder than he had while leading the S’Dyxoi into the ambush along Commerce Way. It made no sense. He had been given the highest ranking in the Training Legion, had excelled in his classes, and his weapon proficiencies were among the highest in his age cohort. “What did I do wrong?” he wondered, his voice breaking for the first time in years.
“You did nothing wrong,” Shaananca insisted.
Druadaen detected a strange, tortured twist in her voice. He looked at her. “Did you do this?”
She closed her eyes. “I did not stop it.”
“Did you suggest it?”
“I did point out that you had gifts uniquely suited for this role. Which, by the way, is not that of an archivist. You are a Courier working on behalf of the Archive Recondite. You will travel the world. You will see great cities. You will—”
“I will not do this willingly.”
She sighed. “I assumed as much.”
“And I will never relent in my appeals to be given the assignment I have worked toward, the one I deserve, the one for which I am perfectly suited.” He’d never claimed such things before, but now that he had, he would not foreswear them.
“I assumed that, too.” Shaananca nodded. “And in the fullness of time, I will add my voice to yours in pressing that you be given an assignment along the lines you wish.”
He recoiled. “‘Along the lines I wish’? But you know exactly what I wish, and you could have spoken for it now!”
She nodded. “Perhaps. But not successfully.”
Druadaen let himself half fall into a chair. “So I am to be made a Courier.” He felt as if all his organs had been removed. “I will not accept that life.”
Shaananca rounded on him. “Pay closer attention. I did not say this is your life. I have made it very clear to others it must not be. But it is decided that before an assignment to the military may be considered, you should travel, learn the ways of ships and the sea, hear many languages, see many peoples and places.”
“And how long must I serve as a Courier?”
“I am uncertain. But rules stipulate that one cannot serve as an Archive Courier for more than three years.”
Druadaen found that curious. “Why?”
Shaananca settled back. “Because the paths you travel, places you go, and contacts you develop will become known by then.”
“And so?”
“And so, you could be intercepted and your portfolio lost. And your life along with it.”
Druadaen sat straighter. “My life? I could be killed for a packet of old papers?”
Shaananca raised an eyebrow. “It beggars belief to think that you might have failed to notice the precautions, and the defenses, an intruder would have to pass in order to reach the Reserved Collection.”
“I have noted them. Although now I suspect I have not noted all of them.”
“You have not. If you have, then we have done a very poor job of concealing them.”
Druadaen reconsidered the Archive, then also reconsidered the many possible destinations along the path the S’Dyxan infiltrators had been following. “Might the Archive have been the object of the recent attack?”
Shaananca’s eyes seemed to grow almost opaque. “It is not beyond the realm of possibility.”
He sighed. “Well, it’s hardly the Legion or even the Ord Ridire, but being a Courier certainly doesn’t sound dull.” A year or two would be a small price to pay for a life in the Legion. “I suppose if I must wait, there are worse ways to serve. So long as I am assigned to the Legion, at the end.”
She nodded. “You will certainly be made a soldier, that much I can assure you. But once again, the precise assignment is not within my power.”
He nodded. “I understand.” But once I am made a soldier, where else would I be assigned but the Legions? Druadaen let that relaxing reassurance wash over him, thinking: So really, what could go wrong?