The librarian smiled a little in spite of herself. “Aren’t lectures the whole point of having an advisor?”
“Yes! Lectures about history and literature. That time I spilled coffee on the Chancellor is still far too recent to be history.”
“I’m sorry,” the librarian said. “I still can’t let you into the special collection. I’d lose my job. I can show you to the third floor, if you’d like.”
“I understand. Don’t worry, I can find my own way.” Annara took her identification papers back and started to walk away.
“Wait,” the librarian said suddenly. “Did you say you’ve been here twice this week? I feel like I’d remember a face like yours.”
Her tone was half flirtatious, half accusatory. Annara grinned sharply at the marble floor before turning around with a suitably flustered expression.
“I, ah, I usually use the northern entrance,” she said, looking at her reflection in the polished golden marble. “It’s closer to my advisor’s office.” She bit her lip and looked up, offering the librarian a shy smile. “But maybe I’ll start coming in this way instead.”
The librarian returned her smile, as slow as honey. “I look forward to it. Good luck with your research. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“Thank you,” Annara said, turning towards the stairs. “So do I.”
✽✽✽
Instead of going to the third floor, Annara took a sharp left and descended the stairs to the basement. The library was silent today, and her footsteps echoed in the empty marble halls. The library was built like a cathedral, with high vaulted ceilings and books enshrined in ancient shelves. Deep underground, she found a huge metal door, with a label indicating that it led to the special collection.
The surface of the door held a complicated lock that looked like a diagram of the solar system, with delicate interlocking circles and small enamel spheres in rich shades of blue and green. There was a hole in the center, presumably for a key. Annara pressed her face against the cold metal and tried to peer inside.
Pieces of the lock’s mechanism glowed faintly blue in the dimness: a gear here, a cam there. As she watched, the color changed from the soft incandescent blue at the heart of a flame to an eerie, otherworldly green.
“Memory steel,” Annara whispered into the lock. Her breath briefly fogged the gleaming metal. “Really?”
Memory steel, the metal refined from memory ore, was the most expensive material in the world. Any information about it was guarded carefully, but it was said to have many strange and magical properties. It could be bonded to a person’s soul, which allowed them to move it with willpower alone. If Annara had to guess, this lock was probably bonded to the head librarian of Chreon Se, so that he was the only person that could open the door.
Footsteps sounded somewhere in the hall behind her. Annara jerked away from the locked door and darted into a side passageway, cursing her luck.
The footsteps passed. Annara let out a long, quiet sigh and thunked her head against the wooden panel. It rang hollowly. She froze.
Once she was certain that no one else was coming, she rapped the panel with her knuckles. It definitely sounded hollow. She ran her hands along it, feeling the grain of the wood, and encountered a carved camellia in the upper left corner. Its wooden petals were intricate and delicate. Each petal held a stylized letter.
“Think,” Annara said quietly to the wood. “You are the Lord of Chreon Se: well-traveled, well-dressed, and probably a little bored. You are famous for your love of fine art, fine wine, and romantic poetry. You would rather not bother the head librarian so late at night, and you happen to have a knack for subterfuge, and so you...”
Build your own private passageway into the special collection, of course.
If the lock on the secret passageway contained memory steel, Annara was out of luck. Memory steel was expensive in the Crescent, however; not very many people knew the secret of refining it. The secret door was probably just a combination lock. Annara would have guessed the Lord of Chreon Se’s birthday, but there were no numbers on the lock, only letters. It was most likely a word that was important to him. It might even be—
Annara sifted through her own memories, looking for the Lord of Chreon Se’s given name. She had met him once, before she was banished from the palace of the Lord of Archon and sent to live in the abbey. She had been a child, and he had been a teenager. He had been plainly dressed and slightly awkward, with none of the grace and elegance people came to expect from him later in his life. Back then, when he still used the name his mother gave him when he spoke to strangers, how did he introduce himself? It was a nature name, like Sparrow or Cedar.
She lifted her eyes to the letters engraved on the petals of the camellia. An elegant J caught her eye, carefully twined with the ruffles of the flower. That was right, Annara suddenly remembered, his true name was Juniper.
She reached up and carefully pressed the petals into the wall, one by one. Wood sighed. With a slight whine, the panel drifted away from the wall.
Annara lifted the hem of her coat and slipped into the dry darkness beyond. It was pitch-black inside, so she stood still and waited for her eyes to adjust. The dim shapes of shelves emerged from the darkness, labeled with crumbling pieces of parchment.
Eventually, she found her way to the wooden chest that stored the scrolls she wanted. It opened easily, trailing gray cobwebs. Inside, Saint Severanne’s notes lay in tightly curled rolls, yellow with age, like a collection of bones.
Annara pulled on a pair of gloves. She wasn’t really a conservator, but she really was a nun, even if she didn’t believe in the sun goddess anymore. She had spent the last eight years living in an abbey, waking at dawn to pray to the pink-tinged sunrise, eating breakfast under the watchful eye of a clay statue of Saint Severanne. The saint’s words still commanded a certain reverence.
One by one, Annara carefully unrolled the scrolls. She found the one she was looking for on the third try. The names of pigments were written out in tiny, round handwriting. The letters were browned and faded with time, and an odd smell drifted up from the page, unfamiliar and difficult to place. The list was written in Old Crescentian. For the first time in a long time, Annara was grateful for the classical education she had received in the palace of the Lord of Archon.
Cinnabar, the list began. Verdigris. Memory ore.
Annara slowly re-rolled the scroll. It was time for plan B.
CHAPTER THREE
The worst violence of the storm had passed. The sky was milky, and the city had filled with fog. It clung to the windows of Mercan’s house, blank as a sheet of paper. Mercan couldn’t sit still. He tapped his fingers on his legs, watching the door, and when he couldn’t take it anymore, he started to prepare a canvas, just to have something to do.
“That’s right, officer, it was in here,” Annara’s voice said, trembling.
There was a sound like a gunshot, and the lock on Mercan’s door clattered down onto the floorboards. Mercan shot to his feet. A group of guards dressed in green and gold Ervonian uniforms crowded into the room. Annara cowered behind them, once again wearing the faded red habit of a nun.
“What is the meaning of this?” Mercan stammered.
“You are wanted in Chreon Se, sir,” the leader of the guards said, “in connection with three separate art forgeries and the disappearance of a painting by Saint Severanne herself. You’ve done very well for yourself, Mercan. If not for the help of our sister here, we never would have found you.”
Annara bobbed into a deferential half-curtsey. “Merely doing my duty, sir. Saint Severanne says to practice virtue and justice in all aspects of our lives.”
“Indeed,” the guard said. “Strange business all around. We’re lucky that she happened to see your paintings when she came by to beg for alms, and we’re twice as lucky that she remembered hearing about your case.”
“I’m from the Order of Saint Severanne,” Annara said. “It caused quite a stir
in my abbey once my sisters and I learned that one of our patron saint’s precious paintings had been stolen. I mean, it’s practically blasphemy! It was the most shocking thing I’ve ever heard.”
The guards chuckled slightly at the naïveté of a woman who probably only left her abbey to buy food for her sisters. Mercan stared at her with pure hatred blazing in his eyes. Annara gave him her best innocent smile.
"She's my accomplice," Mercan hissed. "If you think I'm criminal scum, she's a thousand times worse."
The leader of the guards raised a single eyebrow. "A nun?" he said, with polite incredulity.
"She's no nun. She's lying to you. Why can't you see it?"
"I’m no liar, officer," Annara said. "I live at the Order of Saint Severanne in East Archon. You can talk to my sisters there if you'd like. I've served the sun goddess ever since I was twelve years old. I've never met this man before in my life."
"She's lying! Her name is Holly. She's a thief!"
Annara frowned with a look of great concentration, as if she was trying to work something out. "Who's Holly?"
"I think we've heard enough," the leader of the guards said. "Stop trying to drag this poor woman down with you and come quietly, Mercan."
"I'll pray to the sun goddess for your immortal soul," Annara said to Mercan. "Even though you've walked the path of injustice, you still deserve pity. May the Sun's blessings go with you."
He spat in her face. "Treacherous bitch."
Annara stood frozen for a minute, feeling the spittle cool slightly as it trickled down her cheek. She could feel her carefully engineered smile slip, revealing a little bit of the ugliness and resentment that boiled just below her skin. Then one of the guards handed her a handkerchief, and her gentle expression settled back into place.
"The saints teach us we must forgive those who do us wrong," she said mildly, wiping her face with the handkerchief. "I forgive you, Mercan."
He let out a wordless howl of rage and dove at her, knocking paintings aside. The guards caught his arms and held him back.
"Now, now, none of that," their leader said. "It's over. Come quietly."
Mercan subsided, but Annara could still see anger simmering in his eyes.
"As for you, sister, were you aware that there was a reward out for information leading to the capture of this criminal?" the guard said.
Annara's eyes widened. "Really? I had no idea."
He dug around in his pockets and came up with a heavy pouch, which he placed in her cupped hands. "There you are. Sixteen silver ingots."
"Thank you, officer. Thank you so much. That's more than I make in a year of begging for alms. Wait until the sisters hear about this. May the sun bless you."
He smiled the self-satisfied smile of someone who had just done a good deed. Mercan struggled uselessly as the other guards tied his hands behind his back.
"I can hardly think of what we'll do with it first," Annara continued. "We could fix the leaks in the main hall— oh, or buy new robes for our younger disciples. Thank you so much."
"Just doing my duty, sister," the guard said.
Annara hesitated. She couldn't blush on command, so she delicately hid her face behind one of her wide red sleeves, pretending to hide a blush that didn't exist.
"Uh, officer, I'm sorry to be a nuisance, but..."
"What is it?" the leader of the guards said.
"Does this building have an indoor restroom? I hate to ask, of course, since the Saint preaches modesty at all times..."
The lead guard immediately turned red. "Oh, right. Of course."
"Thank you. Please excuse me," Annara said, and she disappeared up the stairs before the guards could actually figure out whether or not the building had an indoor restroom.
Upstairs, there were three small rooms. Annara opened doors until she found Mercan's bedroom, which had a mattress resting directly on the floor under a ragged nest of blankets. The walls were lined with paintings, all of which had the same flat, medieval style.
Annara hesitated for a moment, looking from painting to painting. According to rumor, the people Mercan worked for had stolen one of Severanne's actual paintings, so that Mercan would have a clear idea of what he was meant to be imitating. The problem was that all the paintings in the room looked the same. Which one was the real one? Were any of them real?
Suddenly, Annara had an idea. She lifted one of the larger paintings and held it up against the window, blocking out the thin silver light. The room was plunged into darkness.
One of the smaller paintings glowed slightly. It was a picture of the clouds over the sea, and it emitted a soft golden light. As Annara watched, the color of the glow shifted to the green of new leaves, then a faint cyan. Saint Severanne used memory ore, and the powdered ore in the paint glowed just like memory steel did.
Annara lifted Saint Severanne's painting off the wall, wrapped it in her scholar's coat, and tucked it into her bag. Then she opened the window and climbed out. It was easy to climb down one of the house's protruding beams. Her feet touched lightly down onto the cobblestones, and she disappeared into the fog.
✽✽✽
By the time Annara made it back to the Order of Saint Severanne, the fog had started to disperse. Rain fell gently into puddles, patterning their smooth surfaces with thousands of interlocking circles. Annara wrung water out of her long hair before she placed one hand on the ancient and pockmarked wooden door and slipped into the abbey.
The main hall was empty, save for the gentle countenance of a clay statue of Saint Severanne. Her smile was effortlessly peaceful as she gazed down at Annara, her carved robes cascading gently down her long legs and folding into ripples at her feet. In comparison, Annara looked like a drowned rat as she stood on the warped stone floor, dripping.
Saint Severanne was not the one who had earned sixteen silver ingots for the abbey. Annara slipped all sixteen into the slot in the collection box, one by one. Though her heart ached a little at the thought of giving up so much easy money, she still had the painting, and the last few shreds of her conscience rebelled at the thought of the younger disciples going hungry.
She would have to fence the painting. Not with the people Mercan and his crew used to fence their stolen artwork, obviously, because that would be awkward. She would have to find someone else, maybe in one of the southernmost islands, far from Ervon. One hundred years ago, the Crescent had a decent amount of organized crime. These days, criminals in the Crescent were a scattered and disorganized bunch. Everyone was loyal only to themselves.
At this time of day, all the other nuns were working on individual tasks, like quiet meditation or tending to the garden. Most of the nuns lived and worked outside the abbey; Annara lived in the shrine across the street. The Order of Saint Severanne owned the shrine, which was open to the public, and Annara had struck a deal that she would keep it clean in exchange for a little privacy.
Like the abbey, the shrine was shabby. It contained two rooms. The front room was open to the public. It contained a stone altar and a wooden statue of the saint. Annara slept in the back room. On the surface, it was plain and bare, with little more than a bed. Under the floorboards, however, there was a small stash of stolen goods that Annara kept around for insurance.
She deposited Saint Severanne's painting under the floorboards, grabbed a deteriorating broom, and went out to sweep the front room. Hundreds of wind chimes hung from the wooden ceiling, swaying gently as she passed and gleaming with glass and copper. They chimed softly as she swept, in high, crystalline tones. The folklore about Saint Severanne said she liked music, so most of her shrines were decorated like this.
Outside, the rain picked up with a low hiss. The roof of the shrine started to leak, so Annara found a chipped wooden bowl to catch the drips. Thunder growled softly in the distance like a tired animal.
Suddenly, someone knocked on the door.
"The shrine is closed," Annara called. "Come back tomorrow morning."
Outside the doo
r, someone hesitated. There was a slight tap, as if the palm of someone's hand had been pressed against the door.
"Annara?" a quiet voice said, just louder than the rain.
Annara opened the door. A familiar young man stood outside, wearing the colors of the Lord of Archon. His rank was higher than that of the soldiers she met earlier, so his uniform wasn't white. It was black with gray and white accents, with a brooch in the shape of a swan's wings pinning his cloak shut. His hair, she knew, was naturally rust-red, but he was so soaked that it looked dark brown. Threads of water streamed from the corners of his clothes. She hadn't seen him since she was thrown out of the palace.
"Haol?" Annara said.
He swallowed. "It's me."
"Well, don't just stand there," she said, stepping aside. "Come inside."
Haol entered the shrine, dripping water all over the floor she had just swept. He looked at the water dripping into the wooden bowl and the weathered statue of the saint with an indescribable expression.
"Back this way," Annara said, leading him into the back room. "I'd offer you tea or wine, but I'm afraid I don't have any. Vow of poverty, and all that."
His expression shuttered. "You truly live like this, then?"
"Plenty of people in Archon live like this, Haol. I thought you of all people would know that."
His lip curled, and he looked away. "You really never change."
"You do, though, apparently," Annara said cheerfully, tapping the brooch on his chest. "Looks like someone's been promoted." She made an exaggerated bow. "All hail Captain Haol, finest guard in Archon. Congratulations."
"I— thank you."
"I remember when you were first learning how to use a sword. You accidentally stabbed that awful portrait of Retired Lord Midion, remember? You thought Lord Archon was going to throw you in prison for the rest of his life, but he was just happy to finally have an excuse to throw the horrible thing out."
Traitor Princess, Assassin Saint Page 2