“My mistake.” Without looking, I wave the pen over and add a line to the bottom of the list.
“You shall not loom over the Librarian?” he reads aloud, incredulity lighting his words at the end.
“Aww, how come he got his own rule?” Lambert asks, actually pouting. “I want one.”
I fix him with a glare. “If you had one, you would only break it later.”
His answering smile says he knows it, too. “Come on, boss. You love me, really!”
Refusing to dignify that with a response, I turn back to Northcliff. “Are you done?”
“It says here I’m not allowed to borrow books?”
“This is an Arcanaeum, not a public library,” I retort. “You may read whatever you wish, but these tomes do not leave these walls.”
I always know when they do, and it’s… uncomfortable. The incompleteness haunts me until the book is returned or the Arcanaeum summons it back. In the beginning, when very few arcanists had managed to find their way back into the halls, it wasn’t so bad. But it quickly got out of hand, and I had to ban the practice for my own sanity. Now that attempting to become a patron is practically a coming-of-age ritual for arcanists, the sheer number of loans would drive me mad.
“Does that include the books in the Vault?”
My spine stiffens, and I pin him with a glare. “There is no Vault.”
I make sure to enunciate every word with clinical precision, so there’s no miscommunication.
Lambert’s eyes widen, and his hand grips his friend’s shoulder, as if to pull him away.
“That’s not what Magister Mathias?—”
“Finish that name, and you’re banished,” I snap, and the pens on the desk start to rise as one, hovering menacingly around my shoulders like darts. “You’re lucky the Arcanaeum has decided to give you a chance. Don’t waste it.”
His lips press into a thin line as we engage in a silent battle of wills. Slowly, with more pressure than needed, he plucks a pen from among the flock still flying around me, dips it into the ink, and scrawls his name along the line. The instant the nib leaves the page, I flick my hand at the document, sending it zooming into his file, and deposit everything into the correct cabinet.
Lambert is bouncing again, and I sigh as the pens return to the desk in neat orderly lines.
“Yes, Mr Winthrop. You may now give him the tour.”
With that, I pop out of the Rotunda, reappearing in the room I’ve carved out for myself inside the clock tower with a groan.
Two
Kyrith
It isn’t cowardice that keeps me away from the desk for the rest of the day. I’m just busy.
Or at least, that’s what I tell myself as I kneel beside an index card drawer in the Astrology Room, flicking ghostly fingers at the tiny cards to re-alphabetise them. On the way here, I floated through three patrons, making all of them gasp.
I’m told that the sensation is like having icy water thrown over your internal organs. But right now, I can’t bring myself to care because there is anAcklandin my Arcanaeum, and the longer he’s here, the more I want him gone.
Fortunately, the only patron who ever comes up here is in his usual corner on the far side of the room, his slender frame hunched over the book he’s cradling. He glances up occasionally, swiping the long curls out of his face as his eyes search for me, then returns to his book.
He’s the Arcanaeum’s biggest enigma. Another descendant of the six original families, but he seems to have almost nothing to do with the rest of them. In fact, he seems to actively avoideveryone, choosing to spend his time poring over the ancient and obscure divination books up here.
So much so that I’ve come to think of it ashisroom.
I gravitate here when I don’t want to be alone, but I can’t necessarily stand the isolating feeling of being amongst the patrons, either.
In all my years, I have never managed to bridge the gap that separates them from me. Even other liminals—rare as they are—don’t approach me or see me as anything other than a spectre. I’m respected, but also held apart.
Sure, I have the collectors—arcanists who search out and bring back new tomes to the Arcanaeum—but they barely communicate with me beyond what they’re paid to.
