One day it was maze-like, all the spiral staircases and the shelves that curved in and around endlessly, like a conch shell, and she wondered,How will I ever escape this labyrinth of knowledge? How will I ever be satisfied to leave?And in those moments, Agnes searched for books of philosophy, the musings of old men from Seraph long expired, arguments of law and matter and mathematics, such that her grandmother would have disdained and forbidden her from.
And the next day the library was a comfort, and she returned to it as an animal to its den, a bird to its nest, knowing the spine of each book so intimately that it was as if she had constructed the library itself. She read accounts of the adventures of great men, soldiers and kings, that were half true at most, knitted through with the fantastic, dragons and ogres and vengeful, squabbling gods. She read only of their lives, not their deaths.
Agnes was one day jubilant, one day fearful, and yet she never hesitated to enter, because she could not be dissuaded from the hope that her work with Pliny would restore to her the faculties of her hand. Such dear hope was both enlivening and miserable.
Yet it was not half so dear as the secret hope she nursed within therecesses of her soul. The hope that Liuprand would appear to her as he had today.
He stood before her in his doublet of midnight blue, the rich aura of Seraphine blood around him, brilliant and gold. His beauty, which was never anything less than a revelation, was a force that emanated from him as well, though beneath it—well cloaked—Agnes recognized exhaustion. No one else would see it, because no one else would think to look; no one wanted to perceive any weakness in their prince.
But Agnes saw it—the dull gleam of his ocean-colored eyes; the daubs of sleepless gray beneath them. And in that moment she was glad her left hand was useless to her, for she wished so desperately to raise it, to cup his cheek, to stroke her thumb across his weary face.
Liuprand’s gaze met hers steadily, within it a thousand unspoken words. And then it skirted down to the arm that hung limply at her side.
“You said there has been an improvement in the pain,” he murmured.
She nodded.
“But no progress made in restoring its function?”
“Little progress,” she admitted. “It is not for lack of trying. Pliny has devised many creative schemes. But I fear it will not be enough. He does not wish to deflate my hope, of course, by speaking such a thing aloud—though I think he, too, believes the inner wounds are too grave to be remedied.”
Liuprand drew a breath. The tremulous rise of his shoulders spoke to Agnes of fettered anger. The vengeance he craved upon his father was a glass that he drank from and then filled again and again.
“Perhaps I am being too precious in my wishes,” Agnes said with a sigh. “I wish to write again. I do not care about sorting beads from rice or threading needles for sewing. But perhaps I should be satisfied that I still have a hand at all.”
“No,” Liuprand said firmly. “Your wishes in this matter are so modest. And your desires…they are not aberrant. Do not let yourself be convinced otherwise.”
Agnes gave a faint shake of her head. “Whatever I would write has no great value to the world.”
“That is not true.”
She lifted her good arm and swept it out, indicating the masses and masses of books around them, the staircases of books that climbed to the high circular window, spiraling up endlessly toward that aperture opened to the sky. “Is each of these tomes of equal value to you?”
There was a tug at the corner of Liuprand’s mouth; it was almost a smile. “You always have the quicker rejoinder, lady. Yes, of course some books are more essential to me than others. And even if I live another century, there are some I will never have the occasion to open—for sometimes I would sooner return to the same book for comfort than seek out a new one. Does that make me a coward of the mind?”
“It makes you human. There are other reasons to read than for the sake of acquiring knowledge.” Agnes had to bite her lip to keep her own smile at bay. “Which book do you return to most often?”
“Such an intimate question.” Liuprand lifted a brow. “Perhaps I shall have you guess.”
“You must give me a hint,” Agnes protested. “This library is large enough to fulfill the appetites of a hundred sages.”
“My mother would be pleased to hear that,” Liuprand said, a note of melancholy in his voice. “Here. I will lead you to the proper section. Within that, you will have to pick it out yourself.”
No small task, as every discrete section of the library was a cobbling of at least a dozen different cabinets, the books crammed tightly against one another on every shelf, hardly leaving room for dust to gather. Liuprand made his way toward the rear section, farthest from the door, where the space between the shelves grew so narrow that he had to twist his enormous body sideways to fit through them. Agnes followed, pulse twinging in her throat.
Where Liuprand stopped was not particularly remarkable; they were hemmed in by shelves on either side, cast in the rather aqueous gleam of sunlight from the very distant window. There was a sense of great stillness here, but not the stillness of death, of blood stoppedsuddenly within its course, of a body seized in rigor mortis. It was the stillness of the seafloor, where the water lay gently over the white sand, and the sand lay gently over the crabs in their shells and the pearls in their oysters and the buried doubloons in their chests. It was a stillness that held the hope of life within it.
Liuprand watched her expectantly, a pleased gleam in his eyes. Agnes looked around. Up to the tops of the shelves where the books were stacked in perilous, tottering piles, and then to the floor. Her gaze caught on one pale spot, where the carpet had been rubbed to whiteness by the repeated planting of feet. She approached it, and stood upon it. Then she rose up onto her tiptoes, as far as she could manage, holding on to the shelf for balance. She could not, of course, fully approximate Liuprand’s height. But her fingers could reach up and brush the spine of the book that, she imagined, would be at his eye level.
Still pushed up on her tiptoes, Agnes looked back over her shoulder. Liuprand was smiling. A secret smile, for her and her alone.
“You are terribly perceptive, my lady.”
“I think perhaps you are not quite as enigmatic as you hope.”
His smile deepened to form dimples in his cheeks, and he approached her. They did not touch, but Agnes could feel the warmth and nearness of his body, and her heartbeat quickened. He reached over her shoulder and took down the book from the shelf. He gave it to Agnes.
As an object of art, it was nothing exceptional. Agnes had bound books for her grandmother that were more ornate, even when constructed with her clumsy child’s hand. (How she longed for that clumsy hand now!) The cover was brown leather, worn around the spine, with gilt peeling away in long stripes from the page edges. She passed her palm across it and felt the embossing, the slightly raised symbol—a sun, its feathery rays extending nearly to the corners of the cover. Touched by curiosity, Agnes went to open it.
