KASIRA
IT TURNED OUT THAT WHENALLASTER SAID DAWN, HE MEANTDAWN.
He materialized in her room with a crack of magic, thrust open the black curtains of the window—which had grown to near the size of the door the last few weeks and acquired said curtains—and announced, “You’re late.”
On reflex, Kasira seized the teacup at her bedside table and flung it at him before it registered that she was not, in fact, under any sort of attack, unless you counted an assault on her patience. Allaster ducked easily, and the cup shattered against the wall.
“You wanted me to train you. Training happens at dawn.” He regarded the broken cup. “Iylis won’t appreciate that. He has a thing about dishware.”
She blinked up at him from under an unruly heap of blankets, deeply regretting that this con required her to be in any degree of proximity to someone this keen so early in the morning. She had been up late last night waiting for the main library to empty out so she could put a note in the compendium for Vera detailing her progress, and she needed at least double the amount of sleep she had gotten. But this was what she had been waiting for, for the past three weeks.
She had finally convinced Allaster to give her a real chance. Now she had to persuade him to grant her magic and officially name her Assistant before the month’s end.
Tossing the covers back, she stumbled out of bed and seized her uniform, then stopped, staring at Allaster until his lips parted in silent realization. “I’ll be downstairs,” he said, and vanished. Once dressed, she discovered a tray of scones and a cup of tea on her table with a request from Iylis that no further cups be sacrificed in her crusade. She downed both tea and scones and scribbled an apology before finding Allaster in one of the many artifact rooms.
“Since you have a decent working knowledge of beasts,” he began in a tone that implied he respected that working knowledge about as much as a pile of dirt, “we’ll begin with artifacts.”
“Fen found something yesterday in the feed shed, didn’t they?” she asked before he could launch into a lecture. “What was it?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“Have you considered that if I’m just meant to be the Ambassador’s distraction, then who is her real pawn?” she demanded.
Allaster inspected his reflection in one of the glass cases. “Not at all. The moment you proclaimed yourself innocent, I ceased all thought on the matter.”
That glimmer of annoyance she was beginning to realize only reared its head around him came flickering back to life, and she actually had to take a breath before responding. “Ambassador Vera isn’t the type to put all her beasts in one barrel—”
“That is a highly inapt analogy.”
“—which means she likely has another agent within Amorlin’s walls, someone who might benefit from sowing discord throughout the Library.” Now that Allaster had decided not to pretend as if she didn’t exist, it was time to begin solidifying herself as his ally, and there was no quicker way to do that than through establishing a common enemy.
Allaster leaned one shoulder against the nearest wall and folded his arms. “None of my mages would ever harm a beast.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I am an immortal sorcerer with access to magic you cannot possibly fathom.” She stared at him until he sighed and said, “Because I know.”
It was hardly an explanation, but Kasira recognized the weightwith which he uttered it, for it was not she Allaster was attempting to convince, but himself. The spy had said the Librarian had become increasingly withdrawn. How well did he truly know his mages? They might all have come here with the intention of serving Amorlin, but for at least one of them, something had changed.
Allaster must have been thinking the same thing, because he straightened as he said, “But I agree with you that it’s possible she has another agent inside the Library, so do let me know if you see anyone acting suspiciously. You know, sneaking about in the evening, staying up long after everyone else has retired, that sort of thing.”
But Kasira had an answer for that, as she always did when gathering information. It was only suspicious when you didn’t have a reason for being where you were, and so she always had an alternative explanation for her whereabouts. This one wasn’t even a lie.
“I have nightmares,” she said. “Dreams so visceral that even when I wake up, I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. Sometimes it’s my hand being burned, sometimes it’s the children pelting me with stones the way they did beasts.”
But usually they were about Belvar. The darkness. The silence. The knowledge that if someone had given her the chance to put an end to her suffering, she would have taken it. “Walking at night helps me calm my nerves.”
Something shifted in Allaster’s gaze, and he looked away from her. “I know a thing or two about that.”
It was quite possibly the most genuine thing he’d ever said to her. She wanted to know more, but his face had already gone cold. He pushed off the wall. “Now follow me.”
They went from room to room, him lecturing her about artifacts, her trying to commit as much information to memory as she could. He named each one and explained its powers, then tested her at the end. Each wrong answer meant a paddock to clean or chore to finish, but she didn’t mind the busywork. It would be good for the other mages to see her being allotted more responsibility, especially after yesterday’s incident with Benlo, which would have had them questioning whatever predetermined notions they had of Eirlana.
As they progressed through the rooms, Kasira actually found herself fascinated. There was a pocket-sized stone that, once touched, could absorb a person’s emotions and a quill that cyphered each word you wrote. She had never realized how extensive artifact magic was. All she had known was the church’s wild theories and that it was up to the Library to determine what types of things required confiscation and what remained under the jurisdiction of the country it was found in.
Jacari mylak was only one of many magical artifacts that had been deemed harmless, alongside artifacts like the kyda crystal that grew in Ayador, and balestone, which was found in all six nations, but most predominantly in Avaria. Some were more borderline, such as makhet, a type of living metal whose mining was a closely guarded Jacari secret. Past Librarians had tried to bring the makhet mines under the jurisdiction of the Library due to the metal’s potential to be used as a weapon, a fact that still strained the two factions’ relations to this day.
With each bit of information Allaster doled out, she prodded for more, her curiosity untethered. But more importantly, she had realized that the more interest she took in these things, the more Allaster’s perception of her shifted. He valued information, and by reflecting that value back at him, he grew more comfortable around her.
