He had not planned to come here.
The observation filed itself away automatically. He had been in his quarters, perhaps sleeping, perhaps not. Something had drawn him to the archives in the middle of the night, and he had not taken time to dress.
She closed the volume she had been reading, keeping her finger between the pages to mark her place. "Would you tell me about Varresh?"
"It is three hours past midnight."
"You said that already. Is that a no?"
Then he moved to the reading table where she had been working and set his torch in an empty bracket on the wall. Without the light source in his hand, he seemed slightly less overwhelming.
"Varresh was an unusual woman." He pulled out the chair across from her and sat. The wood creaked ominously but held. "She came to Northwatch when she was young. Stayed for forty years. Died in this room, at that table."
Verity looked at the reading table. At the worn surface where generations of hands had rested, turned pages, made notes.
"She had no surviving family. No apprentice. No one to pass her work to." Targesh looked at the volume in her hands. "You're reading trade agreements."
"I'm reading everything." She lifted the book slightly. "I'm trying to understand her system."
"She called it 'the web,'" he said. "She said every piece of knowledge was connected to every other piece. The skill was in seeing the threads."
"That's—yes. That's exactly what I was seeing. But I couldn't—" She stopped. Set the book down carefully.
She reached for her pocket. Caught herself. Made herself leave the journal there. Pulling out a quill would end this conversation, and she did not want to end this conversation.
"You understood her work?" she asked.
"I understood that I did not understand it." His shoulders rose a fraction of an inch and settled again. "She tried to explain. Many times. I am not built for that kind of thinking."
"What kind of thinking are you built for?"
She watched him weigh the question.
"Tactical," he said finally. "Immediate. I see a problem, I see solutions, I see consequences." He gestured at the shelves surrounding them. "Varresh saw... everything at once. She could pull a document from fifty years ago and show me how it explained something happening today."
"That's what archives are for." Verity leaned forward, forgetting to be cautious. "That's exactly what they're for. Not storing the past, but illuminating the present. Showing the patterns that repeat, the mistakes that echo, the—"
She stopped. He was watching her with a somewhat baffled expression.
"You are very passionate about documents."
"I am very passionate about knowledge." She pressed her lips together, but didn't look away. "Documents are just how knowledge survives. The passion is for the survival itself. For the idea that something can be understood, can be preserved, can be—"
"Found?"
Verity's mouth opened. Closed. "Yes," she said. "Found."
"Is there something specific you're hoping to find?"
She could tell him. The words were right there, pressing against the back of her teeth:My brother.
But she had been in Northwatch for less than a day. She did not know this orc. She did not know what he would do with the information. She did not know if admitting she had a secondary purpose would violate the terms of her access, would get her sent back to Valdara before she had even begun.
She filed the honesty away for later. Maybe for never.
"The border conflicts," she said instead. "The skirmishes from the last decade especially. My work at the Royal Archive focused on treaty language, but the treaties don't exist in isolation.They're responses to what came before. I want to understand what came before."
Targesh studied her. The torchlight caught the iron of his eyes, and she had the uncomfortable sensation that he could see exactly what she was not saying.
