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“You were creeping around with your assistants. In the middle of the night. In his library, with my book.”

“I didn’t know what it was. I only knew that it was special. I wanted to keep it safe. That is what I was there for. To rescue what books I could.”

“I know that now.” Soraya pushed herself upright against the pillows with some effort. She was still pale, still hollowed out by the fever, but her eyes were clear. “I believe my atlas chose you. And I would like you to see it,” she said. “Now that you know the truth. I think she would like that too.”

She said it without any self-consciousness, as if the atlas’ emotions were a simple statement of fact.

Soraya called for Asha, who appeared immediately, like she’d been waiting. A brief exchange followed in the unfamiliar language Soraya often spoke with her crew. Asha disappeared and returned with a wrapped bundle, setting it on the foot of the bed gently before withdrawing again without a word.

Soraya unwrapped it herself, slowly, taking care. The atlas looked just as it had in the library. Ordinary and not. The cover caught the morning light that lapped the shiny surface like waves.

Soraya ran her thumb along the spine. Something in her face that had been held taut for a long time came loose.

“Despite it all, she is fine. Blessedly intact,” she said.

Amrita watched her cradling the book like a child. All the fine bones of her face bore shadows of the exhaustion that lived behind them. All the years of spinning storms and living a lie that would become legend, were taking a toll. Her illness had not been an accident; it had been inevitable.

“You can’t keep doing this indefinitely,” Amrita said.

“No, I can’t,” Soraya agreed simply, without drama. The admission of a woman who had stopped pretending otherwise. “One day they will win. Unless I find another way.” She looked up from the atlas. “I am very glad to have it back, though. I had begun to stop dreaming I would hold it again.”

She reached across then, not toward the atlas but toward Amrita, and rested two fingers briefly against the back of her hand. The gesture conveyed gratitude and at the same time, so much more.

Amrita did not pull away. She turned her hand over, squeezed Soraya’s fingers once, and let go.

“Tell me about your people’s books,” Amrita said. “What’s left in the hold? What was taken?” She picked up her cup. “Tell me everything.”

Soraya gazed at her with a faraway look in her eyes.

Then she began to speak.

Q: What is philematology?

A: The scientific study of kissing.

It has established, among other things, that two thirds of people tilt their heads to the right. No one has determined whether this is learned or instinctive, or why the left side lost. Kissing as we recognize it does not appear in ancient Egyptian records prior to the arrival of Alexander the Great, who brought it along with his libraries and his ambitions. The Egyptians had a word for it afterward. They did not, apparently, have one before.

—Dan Wilder, The Most Important Question: Fanciful Trivia by Dandelion Wilder

TWENTY-THREE

CLEVER BOOK WITCH

He had to see Tempest again. Even if it meant going back to the Midwest. She said she was headed east, and the next stop on the trivia circuit wasn’t far from Chicago. Bloomington, Indiana. There wasn’t much time to debate the decision. Dan bought his ticket and rented a car. It was an unexpected expense, but he’d more than make it up when he won.

The venue was a function room above a pub in Bloomington, which meant low ceilings, sticky carpet, and a cash bar downstairs that opened at noon every day, whether there was a trivia tournament happening or not. For a moment after he arrived, he worried she wouldn’t show. He’d spent three hundred dollars to get here. When he looked around the room he didn’t spy anyone with a wild shock of red hair. By the time he saw what the meager pot was, he was already beginning to regret his decision to come.

And then he spotted her.

She was standing by the registration table, slightly apart from the crowd, wearing an old pair of jeans and a simple white button-down shirt. He approved. It was exactly the sort of unremarkable clothes to choose when you wanted to blend in with the crowd and not be perceived as a threat. But Dan knew better. He knew what kind of threat she was. The kind who was far too pretty and far too distracting, even in her unremarkable costume.

Thanks to Arthur Hart, he also knew now what he was dealing with. A clever book witch. He liked the sound of that and could picture himself saying it to her. Pulling her corkscrew curls to one side, nuzzling her neck, and whispering it in her ear.

Come here, you clever book witch…

But he couldn’t be letting his guard down with her again.

Tempest wasn’t the only familiar face at this event.