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In the room below, Alek is leaning over the desk as usual. His head lifts when I emerge from the wall, but without the same jerk of surprise as the first time.
A brief smile crosses his face before it falls into his usual stern expression. “You couldn’t wait to get to work?”
“After that catastrophe of a ball, it seems slightly more urgent than before.”
I step closer, peering at what I can see of his skin around his mask. “Did you make it through completely unscathed?”
He lets out a rough laugh. “There are a few benefits to sticking mostly to the walls. I was on the outskirts from the start.”
The question of why he feels the need to hang back itches at me.
Does he think whatever he’s hiding behind his mask is really so off-putting? Every bit of him that Icansee is perfectly appealing.
I yank my thoughts back before I spend more than an instant admiring the curve of his full lips. I’ve already been imagining kissing enough of these out-of-reach men without adding another to the heap.
My gaze drops to the scroll Alek has spread open on the desk, and it proves an excellent distraction. There’s a large T at the top of the paper, with lines branching off in various directions leading to scrawled notations.
I motion to them. “What’s all this?”
Alek’s stance straightens at the change in topic. He taps the scroll. “I’ve been charting out all of Ster. Torstem’s associations. Family members, friends, close colleagues, favorite students, clubs he runs or has been involved with, classes he teaches…”
He’s made a map of the man’s life. I study the flow of the lines. “Most of them don’t appear to connect to each other, only to him.”
Alek nods with a twist of his mouth. “Yes. I haven’t found any cluster that would suggest an unexpectedly large collaboration or an unusual combination of personal and professional life. If he’s involved in a college-wide conspiracy, he hasn’t shown any outward signs of it in his affiliations.”
“I suppose that would be a little much to ask for anyway,” I mutter, resting my fingers at the top of the page. “Is there any sign of where he might have brought kids from?”
“Not so far. I had a chance to exchange a quick word with Benedikt at the start of the ball—he said he’s gotten confirmation that it wasn’t the first time Torstem has brought a kid around to see the college. Apparently it’s a fairly common habit of his. But the people he talked to were under the impression they were relatives from his own family or those of associates.”
I’ve spotted the family tree part of the chart. “He doesn’t have much in the way of his own relatives, it looks like.”
“He doesn’t,” Alek agrees. “One grown daughter who’s taken a wife and adopted a toddler. One sister and a couple of cousins, only a few children between them, either years past dedication age or many years off. No one who’d match the boy you described.”
“And no one in his family would have acted like an outer-warder anyway.” I frown.
Alek glances toward the door to the larger archives. “I wanted to get access to his financial records. Those could tell quite a story. The college has its own banking system for staff, and all money goes in and out through the accounting office. But the accountants keep the ledgers in a secure room off the library. It’s not the sort of thing they’d hand over or I can simply walk in and take.”
My spirits lift with a flash of renewed confidence. Now this sounds like exactly the kind of job I’m meant to do.
“Show me where the room is, and we’ll figure something out.”
Alek shoots me a skeptical look. “They’re not going to let you just walk in either.”
“I wasn’t planning on asking.” I waggle my fingers. “Thief, remember?”
He pauses, a whole debate going on in the shadow that passes over his eyes.
Julita lets out a bright chuckle.Oh, this is going to be fun.
“Julita approves of the plan,” I add, because I can.
Alek’s gaze jerks to mine again. His lips purse.
Then his flicker of a smile comes back. “Fine. Let’s see what you can make of it, at least.”
He leads me through the larger archive room and then two more basement areas that are stuffed full of all the documents and books the archivists don’t think anyone really needs but can’t bear to get rid of anyway. We slip up a winding staircase and into the library proper.
I’ve never actually been in this vast room before. The smell of aged leather and paper comes with less dust than the lower archives, and the endless rows of bookcases are spaced farther apart for ease of access, with narrow rugs stretching in between. Every shelf is packed with worn leather covers.
