AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I drink in the scent and suppress the longing to wander from row to row, scanning every title. We’re on a mission here.
Alek leads me on a roundabout route, avoiding the clusters of chairs around small tables where students are murmuring to each other over open texts. In a far corner of the room, he nods toward a door with a glass pane etched with Estera’s sigil and a bronze plaque proclaiming it theAccounting Archive.
“Who can open that door?” I ask him quietly.
“Only a couple of the librarians are on the accounting staff and have access. Usually, one works in the morning and the other in the afternoon.” He cranes his neck to peek through the window from afar. “Stera. Elzbita is in there right now.”
“And they just sit around all day waiting for someone to need to make a transaction?”
Alek shakes his head. “They’re still librarians and archivists too. They come out and advise the students when they aren’t otherwise occupied.”
I take in the shelves around us, the small table off to the side that no one has ventured far enough to sit at, the hardwood floor partly covered by more rugs. A plan takes shape in my head.
“If you can come up with an excuse to request her help, something you’d specifically need her for over the other librarians, I can get that ledger. You’ll just need to keep her busy for long enough for me to find the right one.”
Alek inhales a little shakily, but when I look at him, a spark has come into his bright brown eyes. He rocks on his feet as if gathering momentum. “I can do that. Yes.”
He aims a quick smile at me, brighter than the one before. Great God help me if my heart doesn’t flip right over at the conspiratorial gleam in the flash of his teeth. Then he strides forward without waiting for further instructions.
I dash to the table, nudge one of the chairs aside, and duck down where I’ll be out of sight. I’ve got a clear view to the accounting office, about ten paces away.
As Alek knocks on the door, I slide a knife out of its sheath on my leg. My fingers curl around it, the muscles in my arm already flexing as I judge the distance.
The librarian opens the door, and Alek gives her a spiel I can’t totally follow about source documents and financial interconnections.
Whatever he’s getting at, Stera. Elzbita appears to catch on. She nods a few times and then, huzzah, pushes the door wide to step past it and usher him to a set of shelves elsewhere in the library.
I watch the swing of the door back toward its frame and listen to the padding of their footsteps retreating. At the last possible second, I flick my hand forward.
The knife flies through the air and hits the space between the door and the frame just before the door thuds into place. The two slabs of wood pin the blade between them, leaving the door just a smidge ajar.
Julita lets out a whoop of approval in my head.
I allow myself a victory grin and glance around this corner of the library again. Alek and Stera. Elzbita have disappeared from view; no one else is around.
I stay low anyway, darting across the short span of floor and reclaiming my knife as I scoot through the doorway. I close the door behind me in case anyone passes by who’d be concerned.
The accounting room smells like tallow, though I can’t see any candles currently in use. A modest glow streams from a thin window over the built-in bookcases.
I scuttle past the desk, keeping my head below the level of the window on the door, and paw through the rows of leatherbound ledgers on the shelves. Irritatingly, they have only numbers that are meaningless to me printed on their spines, with no apparent order.
After peeking inside a few, I realize the pattern at the same time Julita apparently does.They’re alphabetical by name. Ster. Torstem’s should be toward the end, then.
It only takes a few more tries to land on the one with his name on the first page. I don’t bother flipping through the pages with their cramped notations yet, just hug the ledger close to my chest and slink back over to the door.
It should be simple enough to slip back out and—
Voices filter through from outside. I freeze with a lurch of panic at the thought that the librarian might have returned already.
But it’s two male voices, joking about how far up their professor’s ass they’d like to stick the scroll they were just poring over.
I hold still and silent, willing them to move on. For some reason, they’ve decided to hang around right by the accounting office.
Obnoxious asses,Julita mutters.Why don’t they get moving?
My mouth starts to go dry. Just how long can Alek keep Stera. Elzbita occupied with his made-up question?
As if on cue, my magic twitches in my chest. Jumping to remind me thatitcould move these obstacles ever so easily if I’d just let it.
