“Oh?”
Marin stepped forward into the light, and she saw Rijes’s eyes widen slightly as she recognized her, but she said nothing. Rijes studied Dax more carefully.
“I will give you privacy,” Senira said.
Rijes clarified, “He means he will be listening through the hole in the wall rather than staring at us while we speak.”
Senira sighed.
“If I am such a trial to you, you could allow me to leave,” Rijes said.
Again Marin had to struggle not to smile. She’d always liked Rijes Velk. It was good to see whatever had happened hadn’t broken her spirit.
“Not without the approval of my supervisors,” Senira said stiffly. “They would dock my pay for insubordination, and I have a family to support. My deepest apologies.” He then stepped backward out the door and shut it behind him. His footsteps retreated but only for about half a minute. Marin heard another door open and didn’t doubt that Rijes was correct—he’d gone into the room next door to eavesdrop. She smirked.
“So polite and yet so unhelpful,” Rijes murmured.
Dax bowed to Rijes. “I am Dax.” He used his shortened name, Marin noticed. She wondered if he preferred it, if he thought ofDax and Daxicend as two different people in two different kinds of settings. She wondered which he considered the real him. She knew which one she thought was, and she knew both Perri and Ree would agree. It was fascinating that he had that other self within him. “And this is Captain Mariner.”
Stepping closer, Marin asked, “Are you okay?” She didn’t see any visible bruises, and Rijes stood without any sign of pain, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hiding it.
“I’m locked in a room,” Rijes said crisply, “but I have not been mistreated.”
“Why are you in here?” Marin asked. “All we were told was that your location was ‘classified.’ Are you a prisoner?”
Rijes snorted. “I am an inconvenience, a stray bit of business that has slipped between the cracks of our new bureaucracy.” She then let out a heavy sigh, revealing a tiredness that Marin hadn’t seen in the grand woman before. Her voice held a bitter note. “They have no legal grounds to hold me. I have violated no laws. I simply refuse to cooperate with their demands, and that has left them flummoxed.” She lowered herself to sit on the sole chair in the room. Marin noted it was not unlike a prison cell: a single flat bed with a thin blanket, a sink in one corner, and a single chair. She didn’t see any books, which felt like a cruelty for a librarian.
“May we ask what those demands are?” Dax asked.
“In the initial days of the uprising, I secured as many tomes as I could in protected vaults within the Great Library, but the vaults aren’t vast enough to protect all the many hundreds of thousands of volumes in our care, and so I permitted my librarians to take as many books and scrolls as they could and flee Alyssium, to protect the knowledge and the stories within from destruction. The provisional government would like those books back.” She folded her hands on her lap, looking as if she were in her office in the magnificent library, not in an unlabeled cell in a random government building. “It is perhaps my own fault. I know how quickly a revolution can turn to chaos, no matter how justified the violence or how well-intentionedits instigators, and so I acted to secure the Crescent Islands’ greatest treasure: its past and its future.”
“It sounds like you were doing your job,” Marin said. “I don’t understand why they’re holding you for that. Or why here, in a ‘classified’ location.” It would be easy for someone to disappear from a place like this. She tried not to shudder visibly.
“I was indeed doing my job,” Rijes said, “and they agree I was.” She leveled a look at the blank wall. “Where we disagree is that they claim it’s also my job to recall those books that were taken for their protection. I believe that until the new government has proven its stability, the books are safer in the hands of my librarians, wherever they may be.”
“But you haven’t violated any laws?” Dax pressed.
“I have not,” Rijes agreed. A faint smile touched her lips. “But I have been uncooperative.” She raised her voice. “Haven’t I, Senira?” She lowered her voice again to a normal volume. “It frustrates them. They believe it undermines them, though it does not. I have no issue with their control of the government. In fact, I fully support it. But my loyalty remains with the safety of the books.”
“But… they agreed that’s your job,” Marin said. “To protect the books.”
“I have argued this,” Rijes said placidly. “I have also argued that I am no longer the head of the Great Library, and it is not my responsibility to recall the librarians. I have served my term, and I have chosen to retire and pursue other interests. Let my successor handle the aftermath of the changes to our world.” It was amazing how regal she managed to be while held against her will and stripped of all the trappings of her rank. She exuded confidence from her pores.
Dax shook his head. “I truly don’t understand what right they have to imprison you here.”
Rijes shot another look at the wall. “They argue it’s not a prison. I am simply here for questioning. However, because the government is so busy, they have not had time to devote to questioning me. And so I mostly wait.”
“If you aren’t actually under arrest, why can’t you leave?” Marin asked. Surely, the new government wasn’t in favor of holding innocent people against their will. That was the kind of thing the revolutionaries had fought against.
“If I left without permission, then theywouldhave grounds to arrest me, for not cooperating with official business.”
Rijes really had fallen into a bureaucratic limbo, as the librarian on the dock had said. “How long have you been here?” Marin asked, appalled.
“Ten days and eight hours,” Rijes said. “I would track the minutes as well, but as you can see, there is no timepiece in the room. I am forced to track the days’ time through the progression of sunlight through the window. This has proven tedious.”
“They can’t just keep you here forever,” Marin objected. “It’s absurd.”
“Government is full of absurdity,” Rijes said. “It’s its defining feature, regardless of whose government it is.”
