The day I arrive in Aretia, it's one year to the day since my father's death and it's raining. The sky leaks the kind of cold spring rain that makes me wish it was still cold enough to snow, and I’m tired from the long journey here, from all of the things I’m adamantly not thinking about today. I’m mostly hoping that the seals on my rucksack are holding. There's up-sides to the scribe hood I wear, and the fact that it's waterproof is one of them. I say goodbye to the scribe and healer assigned to the infantry unit I’ve been traveling with and look up at Riorson House.
There's rather a lot of it for something called a house, and while I’ve read about its history and the sieges it's survived, seeing it in person is different. It's much larger in stone than it was on paper.
There are guards at the door, tucked away out of the rain in little shelters, and one of them stands when I approach.
"I'm here to see-"
"You're the scribe!" one of them says, a blonde man about my age, and I realize he's got to be a foot taller than me at least. "We knew you were coming, I'll take you in."
"Oh, thank you?" I’ve been answering to hierarchy pretty much my entire life. I’ve only recently gotten a taste of being near the top of it, once I’d worked my way through the trainee scribe ranks from Page to Signature to Manuscript leader last year. I expect to be back at the bottom of the hierarchy, especially on an assignment answering to some noble's special project. Still, it's nice to feel wanted.
"Sorry, I'm Liam, nice to meet you!" He smiles at me as he takes me straight into Riorson House and through the foyer without even asking her to wait. "I'm so glad you're here, I've been so bored."
I blink at that. "I hope you're not expecting me to be entertaining?" I’ve heard... stories.
"No, it's just that while you're here Xaden said I could be your assistant. I work in the library a couple mornings a week anyway, since we don't have a full time scribe."
"There's no one in charge of your library?" The words come out scandalized, a bit angry and definitely louder than I intended. Which is unfortunate, because one of the carved wooden doors has just opened and Duke Riorson is looking at me. He looks exactly like his portraits.
I bow the precise depth expected of a scribe to a duke, grateful for an excuse to look at the floor and try to chase the embarrassment out of my face. "I see you've arrived, Lieutenant Sorrengail. Thank you for coming."
"I see you've been made aware of one of the reasons we need a scribe," the duke adds with a smile that seems surprisingly genuine considering I’ve just insulted him indirectly. "Please come in. Liam, finish your shift, please."
"Of course!" Liam gives the duke a gesture something between a wave and a salute and wanders back the way he came. "I'll see you around, Lieutenant."
"Xaden, would you-"
"-of course." Xaden Riorson, the duke's son. Also ridiculously tall. Dark skin, darker hair, eyes so dark they seem to be made of ink. My face heats up again, and not with embarrassment this time. I’m starting to think Tyrrendor was a mistake. Where's my self control? Did I leave it at Basgiath?
"We should get you out of those clothes," Xaden says as he sweeps past me, and I choke.
He pauses to look at me as I regain my composure, a smirk spreading across his face. "Into dry ones, Madame Scribe, don't worry. I know how scribes are."
"I didn't- I knew you meant-" I force myself to take a deep breath and then another as I follow him, taking two steps for his every one. "What do you mean, you know how scribes are?"
"Aren't you meant to be above the earthy pursuits of the rest of us? That's what the last scribe I met always implied."
"Hardly," I laugh to myself. "We're meant to record and preserve but we're not celibate."
"Good to know."
My face is red again, and I’m simply going to die of blushing before I can do any research here.
He shows me what he calls my guest quarters, which is larger than any bedroom I’ve ever been assigned, and waits outside the room while I change into dry robes and leave the soaked ones hanging from one of the pegs built into the stone walls. I take a few minutes to empty my pack and make sure nothing needs to be dried, but it looks like everything made it intact.
In clean clothes and with my hair freshly pinned up under my hood, I step out of the guest room. Xaden is still waiting for me in the hallway, and it seems strange to have a duke's son waiting on me. He nods to me when I appear and we walk to the library. I hadn't realized that it was inside of Riorson House, but I’m starting to get the impression that Riorson House isn't even a castle so much as it's a city unto itself. Which isn't surprising, given what it was built to withstand.
The library itself is utterly unlike the Archives. There are windows, for one thing, huge ones, and I cannot help staring.
"They're runed," Xaden says.
"What?"
"There's runes etched into the glass with enough magic to keep the sunlight from damaging the books." Now that he's said it, I see the knotted lines around the edges of each pane of glass. I look around the library and realize there are runes everywhere. Carved into the stone walls, inlaid with mother of pearl in the wooden bookshelves, woven into the tapestries on the walls where they flit between the figures I can identify from Tyrrish folklore.
"Preservation, protection from fire, repelling insects, not too wet, not too dry, not too hot, not too cold," he lists them off, pointing around the room. I'm familiar with the lesser magics that protect the Archives back in Basgiath, of course, but this is more than just utilitarian. It's elegant, even beautiful.
"It's brilliant."
"I know." He speaks as though he wove it all himself, taking ownership. That's nobility for you.
As well as elegantly built, the library is clearly meant to be used, which is another huge point in Duke Riorson's favor over most of the other aristocratic libraries I’ve visited. There are chairs everywhere, some of the more utilitarian wooden ones I’m familiar with and others that look like they belong in a sitting room, big enough that I'm sure I could curl up and sleep in them. Small mage lights hover over the bookshelves to ensure the titles are readable, or over the worktables where they spring to life when I move my hand under them. More of them dance slowly overhead, illuminating the whole room.
He takes me through the shelves on both the first and second floor, and though I hurt enough that I’m not sure the second floor is a good idea, I’m certainly not going to stop now.
"How long before the books I need to translate arrive?"
"A few weeks. Do you know the circumstances?"
I remember the request the duke sent; Markham showed it to me when he offered me the post. "They're part of your engagement, aren't they? Are they coming with your fiancee?"
"Yes, so we're on her timeline, unfortunately." There's a tic in his jaw when he says that. He can't be worried about the books to that degree, so I wonder if he's not looking forward to his princess after all.
"I can take it from here," I tell him, taking out a fresh journal and a quill. There must be ink around here, right?
He looks at her with no small amount of horror. "Are you intending to use that in here?"
I look down in confusion. "I intend to take notes."
"With a quill. And ink, I presume?"
"Yes." I’m exasperated now. "How do Tyrs take notes, then?"
"If you can't use lesser magics yourself, I'll get you a runed pen to write with. Gods and fishes, is that what you use in the almighty Archives?"
I’m blushing again. "Only the riders have lesser magic, so..."
Xaden shakes his head. "Of course, of course. I'll have pens for you in the morning."
"I guess I'll just look around then? Perhaps start reading? You don't need to stay and watch me, I'm sure you're busy." He makes it so difficult to think, with his infuriating smirk and his clear love for his family's library and his stupidly handsome face.
He drapes his body over an armchair. "I'd like to stay for a bit while you settle in if you don't mind, Madame Scribe. Just to ensure there are no further misunderstandings."
"Lieutenant Scribe," I correct. Stupidly smug face.
He nods. "Lieutenant Scribe, of course. In Navarre, even the libraries are militarized."
"That's an oversimplification."
"Is it?"
"On further reflection, I think I should rest after my travel," I snap, daring him to say something, anything about it. To imply I’m weak, or frivolous, or some other judgment of scribes or of Navarre.
But no, he only nods and picks up a book sitting next to the stupid armchair.
I all but stomp out of the library and back to my room.
--
In the morning, I dress and eat and make my way to the library with some trepidation and some anticipation, wondering if Xaden will be back today with the promised writing tools and more insults for the way I was trained.
The pens are there, at least. Liam holds the wooden box out to me and I pick up one of the small, self-contained inkpens sitting in it. It feels surprisingly heavy in my hands, though I’m fairly sure that's not the weight of the thing. It looks like it's a single piece of glass, most of which is hollow and filled with ink on the inside, and at one end is a little onion bulb of a tip with grooves that must be for the ink. The runes etched on the glass spread all the way around it, looking like frost on a winter morning.
"They're beautiful," I admit, because it's Liam standing in front of her and not him. "Does every random tool in this place look this good?"
"We do like our fancy decorations," Liam grins. "But these don't belong to the library. Xaden brought them in this morning from the glasswielder, he said you'd need something a bit smaller than usual to be comfortable."
My first instinct is to see that as almost an insult. Of course I can hold a pen, what does he think I’ve done for my entire life up to this point. But I think about the weight of the pen in my hand, and how my wrist feels when I’ve been taking notes for a few hours, and I think maybe... maybe it's thoughtful. Maybe I want it to be thoughtful.
"I was telling... what title should I use for the duke's son?" I ask, realizing I hadn't heard anybody use one, and that couldn't be right.
"Title? That's not really the way we do it... He's just Xaden."
"And he lets you?"
"Well, it's his name, what else would I call him? I grew up here, Lieutenant Sorrengail, I've been calling him Xaden since I was five and he was seven."
"Oh. I didn't realize."
"Maybe I should warn you then, before I call the duke Uncle Fen."
Liam laughs at the face I make. The way he laughs is warm and friendly, like the morning sun through the windows, and like the windows I appreciate it more because I know something of what made it. "It's strange to imagine; you'll have to forgive me. My mother was stationed in Calldyr when I was young and I'm fairly sure the king expected the princes to call him King Tauri to his face even during their bedtime stories. If he told them bedtime stories, which. He probably did not."
Now Liam is laughing even more, and I’m starting to think I’m going to enjoy this assignment.
"On that note, Liam, I will ask you to call me Violet. It's silly to use titles when no one else is."
"As you wish. What books would you like to begin with, Violet?" He bows deeply as he asks and I finally join him in laughing.
--
There are so many Tyrrish folktale collections here that don't exist in the Archives. I would know. I scoured the Archives for any reference when I was doing my capstone, as well as enduring the argument with my mother about going into my father's study while he was sick.
Intellectually, I know that the Archives wants to have a copy of every book, but that it’s impossible. There are things that were lost when the Archives burned hundreds of years ago, and exist only in translation or as fragments quoted in other things. There are also the people who have wealth or status and want to flaunt it by owning things no one else could have, which was why I was at least passingly familiar with the personal libraries of several aristocrats in Navarre. Usually what they collected was of no consequence, but sometimes rare things would turn up that someone's great-great-grandmother had stashed away.
In this case, it is books from outside the scope of the Archives. Many of the books are simple collections of oral stories that had been transcribed at some point, and I could see why they either hadn't been copied for the Archives or the Archives hadn't expressed interest in the copies. The folklore collected in them was varied, from stories of Dunne and Zihnal walking the earth taking bets on the reactions of men and warnings about the bogeyman venin that stole children who didn't eat their vegetables, to the reason that I am here. The selkie stories.
My capstone had been primarily about the common themes between the tales of water-dwelling shapeshifters who could pass as humans, especially the various words used to describe them and their relationships to the water and to the Source in the different ancient languages. Old Krovlish was one of my father's specialties and I can admit I probably chose it out of a superstitious hope he'd live to see me finish it, to read it.
I’d found a few sources in Tyrrish as well in the Archives, though most of what was there had already been translated into modern Navarran. I went to the original sources as much as I could, for constancy's sake, and I got to use my study of Old Lucerish as well, to translate the stories where the sealwomen came out of the ice.
Sixteen new sources translated from three different languages, and I’d made a very strong argument that understanding the way the magic of the selkies was described gave invaluable insight into the way humans viewed magic before the First Six and the pacts with the dragons and gryphons.
All of that and I’d barely been able to present it, because Markham wanted to redact all of my conclusions. The argument that the marriages between selkies and humans could constitute a third kind of pact. Sure, there weren't any selkies or wyvern like there were dragons and gryphons, but the concepts were still representative of the way people had understood magic, energy and the Source.
The Old Krovlish word for a selkie's magic was different than the word used for a bond with a gryphon. And yet it was almost a perfect cognate for the Tyrrish word that still survived as the root of modern words like rune. That didn't happen by accident.
Defending the capstone after Markham had redacted it to shreds felt like insult on top of insult, particularly because Markham had refused to even let me tell the committee that there had been additional research removed- so they tore into me for only reiterating research instead of producing original work. Markham made it clear that I’d only passed by his generous intervention, so my promotion to Manuscript Leader felt like a bitter gift given in apology for my father's impending death instead of something I’d earned.
I remembered Markham showing me the request from the Duke for research assistance.
I also remembered his stern reminder of what was reasonable, and what was a flight of fancy from a sad little scribe girl who was losing her father. He expected me to perform up to the standards of the Scribe Quadrant.
I had convinced myself that I would do just that, and I wouldn't allow myself to get distracted by unlikely conclusions.
And then I started reading the Tyrrish stories, and my chest burned with so much anger that I thought I was going to set the books on fire, because it was all right there.
--
"Does it say anything about how to find a selkie?" Xaden's voice is more vulnerable than I've ever heard it. "That's what my father is really looking for."
"He wants to find a selkie? Why, just to see if they're real?"
"Not just any selkie. A specific one." I watch Xaden swallow before he speaks again. "My mother."
My first thought is that this is some kind of joke, that he's fucking with my head again. The look on his face, though, that's serious. Dangerously close to open.
"You're serious," I shake my head. "But they're just folklore, like venin and wyvern?"
"There are a great many things that don't exist in Navarre that seem to manage to exist outside the wards regardless." He says it like he's disappointed in me and I feel a lump in my throat. I won't disappoint him. I can't.
"Don't give up on me, Xaden. Just give me a minute to catch up." In my mind I flick through the stack of cards that represent everything I know. What else is in the stack of things that would be real if selkies are real?
"Are you implying that wyvern are real too? Venin?"
"More than implying."
Well, that is terrifying.
"Can I ask some questions about your mother?"
Xaden nods.
"When did she leave?"
"My tenth birthday," he says quietly. "But it was clear she was unhappy before that."
I cast my mind back over the stories. "She had a sealskin?"
Xaden nods. "She showed it to me several times."
"Do you have one?"
"I should," he tells me. "That's what you're here to help me find."
--
The day everyone else is waiting for is still a month away, but I am nearly vibrating with excitement. Princess Catriona arrives today, and with her, her dowry- including the ancient Krovlish tomes I’d been brought to translate in the first place. Liam and I are waiting off to the side when she arrives.
Duke Riorson is there, of course, and most of his assembly, but it is Xaden who helps his betrothed down from the gryphon she has flown in on.
I have never seen a gryphon in Tyrrendor. They typically don't go to the trouble of ascending to the high plateaus. But the princess and her escort (including a sister? cousin? they look like sisters) have arrived by gryphon nonetheless, presumably to make a sufficiently grand entrance.
I’m not sure how anyone else feels about it, but despite their smaller size compared to the dragons I’ve seen, I’m impressed. Catriona looks every inch the princess from the folktales and fairy stories I have been filling my head with, too. She's tall enough to look anyone who isn’t a ridiculously tall Tyrrish man in the eye, and her- dress uniform? I’m not entirely sure how flier ranks work or whether this outfit would be considered official, but it's beautifully tailored to a body that deserves beautiful tailoring.
Most of the time, I don't resent my shapeless scribe robes, but watching the way Xaden Riorson watches Catriona Cordella, I do.
Though now that I think about it... Xaden is chatting with her and her escort, and while his dark eyes flash, his smile looks almost predatory. His back is stiff and straighter than usual, and when exactly did I spend so much time studying Xaden Riorson that I know what his usual posture is? I’m in so much trouble.
Most of the crowd moves inside, while Liam and I approach the gryphons slowly. One of Catriona's escorts is unstrapping the luggage they're carrying, and I watch for a moment.
"Is it safe for us to approach? I wouldn't want to startle them," I call as loudly as I dare. "We're here to take the books up to the library."
"Just a moment, they're skittish up here," the man replies. He looks like he might be a bit older than Xaden, but it's hard to say. His dark hair is pulled into a low ponytail and he looks like the sort of man who rides gryphons, somehow. Once the elaborate structures holding the chests have been taken apart into leather strappings and the gryphons have flown out of the courtyard, he calls them over.
"I'm Drake, I didn't catch your names," he says, though they were never introduced.
"I'm Liam, library assistant, and Violet here is our scribe in residence." Liam bows the sort of precise-angles-are-for-other-people bow that is a staple of Aretian diplomacy, and Drake nods his head.
The chest he gestures to isn't the largest, but it's the least decorative. That makes sense in my mind, because what it holds is the most valuable. I’ve been told every book inside it exists only in a single copy, and what could be worth more than something that's been nearly lost and cannot be regained?
"Let me help you carry it." I look up and realize Xaden has returned already, though I’d expected him to be busy with his princess now. He gestures for Liam to take one side as he grabs the other. "I think the height difference might be awkward otherwise."
I'm willing to concede the point even if I don't like it; the chest is wide enough that it will be awkward for Liam to lift by itself and of course we don't want to risk shifting anything. I let Liam make small talk while I follow behind.
Once they've set the box on one of the library tables, I pull on white cotton gloves while Drake unlocks it. The inside of the box is embedded with preservation runes designed to keep the contents safe while traveling, and the interior is fitted and lined so that the volumes themselves could hardly move. There wasn't any danger to the books even if Liam had dropped the thing.
I look up at Xaden again, where he's looking around the Aretian library. "If you're not in a hurry to get back to your princess, you're welcome to stay while I start going through them," I offer, fully suspecting that he was planning to stay regardless of my invitation. It has certainly never stopped him before. Still, I’m curious.
"Aren't you eager to spend time with her?"
Xaden scoffs. "Isn't the point of being betrothed that we'll spend no shortage of time together in the future?"
"Not much for romance, I see."
"I've spent time with Cat before. The books, however, are new."
I don't have an argument for that. I’m certainly more interested in the books than I am in Catriona, after all. Liam has fetched a pair of gloves for Xaden as well, and several wedges to support the books without requiring them to lie flat as they are inspected. I prepare a new notebook to record the initial catalog of the gift.
I’m so focused on my work beyond anything else that it seems like when I look up again there's only darkness outside the windows and the magelights burn overhead. I'm staring at the oldest of the books, the one without a proper title or author page. I had to start translating to figure out what it was, and by the time I've got the shape of it, I'm very grateful for Xaden's fancy pens. I'm definitely shaking too much for a quill.
I stand up too quickly, nearly tripping over my own chair as I start to turn. Before I even realize I'm losing my balance, strong hands are grabbing my upper arms, steadying me. I look up into Xaden's eyes, dark as the sky outside, and my excitement bubbles right out of me.
"This one's a journal, a primary source! The author came from a pod in the Bay of Malek!"
His breath catches and he pulls me against him, and before I think about what I'm doing I hook my foot around the stepstool I've been using in the aisles, pulling it close enough that I can step up on it and press myself into kissing him.
It's possibly the stupidest thing I've done in my entire life.
He returns the pressure, nipping at my bottom lip before he lets me pull away to breathe.
We both stand there for a long minute, and I wonder if he's as surprised by what he did as I am by my actions. This must be why scribes train to put aside their emotions so strongly. I've never realized before how dangerous primary sources are.
--
Drake looks like the stereotypical gryphon flier in the stories we heard about the front lines as kids. Where Catriona looks like a flier princess from a fairy story, Drake reminds me of no one so much as my older brother Brennan in brown instead of black.
Living with three fliers has made me slightly less skittish than I was when they first arrived, but it's still nerve-wracking to walk up to him when I see him in the library by himself.
"Can I help you find anything?"
"Ah, young Master Archivist. I am just enjoying the duke's hospitality and maybe looking for something entertaining to read. I've done my share of diplomatic duties but I'm looking forward to my cousin's wedding so I can get back in the air." He's browsing one of the shelves, the one with Navarran history.
"Fighting dragons?" I ask him as casually as I can manage, "Or fighting venin?"
He startles visibly but he's smirking by the time he turns around. "I didn't think you believed in venin."
"My reason for being is to discover the truth." I stand up straighter. Markham succeeded in redacting my research because he made me doubt myself. I wasn't going to let that happen again.
The flier looks me up and down. "Might want to be careful who you share that with. I've seen Navarran generals kill the scraps of a unit who escaped a venin attack just to keep their secret. Two of your infantry boys… and the scribe."
"I appreciate the warning." I want to doubt him but I can't. That would mean doubting Xaden too, and I don't. I'm not sure who I can trust in Navarre with this. The leadership must know, including my mother. Maybe… maybe Brennan?
I'll have to think about it. I bring the oldest of the Krovlish books out again, hoping to find something I missed, something I can offer Xaden. This is the one that was allegedly written by a selkie herself, one who was trapped not by her husband but by his sister. It's hard to read; she talks about so much longing and betrayal, but it's got to be the best chance.
--
"Every story I've seen that mentions it, if the selkie's child has a skin, she either gives it to them directly or she leaves it for them." The disappointment I feel is no longer academic. Neither is the pain on Xaden's face. "There's no one else she might have left it with?"
"I can't think of anyone who doesn't know I'm looking."
I nod. "Your father would have mentioned it if there was anyone else, I'm sure. I think he's even more obsessed with this than you are."
"What do you mean?" Damn, when he pins me with that gaze I feel like he sees right through me. What am I missing?
"He told me he wanted me to look at everything for ideas- not just the children of selkies specifically, but any other reference I could find to someone else putting on a selkie's skin or how to make it work. At first I thought he was going to try to steal you a skin if he couldn't find yours, but he's so determined to see you married that doesn't make sense."
His eyes narrow a fraction and for a second I see them like a seal's eyes, sclera blown so wide there's no white left. Just ink-black with those golden flecks in them. He turns to leave.
"You have an idea?" I call after him, but he's not even slowing down so I can keep up and I have to hurry after him. He goes straight to his father's office and barges in, like the wards aren't even there.
I can't bring myself to follow him into the duke's space without an invitation, but I wait just outside the doorway.
"Out."
"Xaden-"
"We can have this conversation with or without them here."
"You will wait. I'm trying to repair the damage of you calling off your betrothal a week before the wedding!"
My eyes widen. He'd called off the wedding?
"Where's my pelt, Father?"
"We've been through this-"
"Have we? The scribe lieutenant told me you were looking for references to anyone wearing a selkie's skin. That was the Krovlish one you wanted, isn't it? The one from the selkie whose sister in law stole her skin and swam away with it. You'd take my birthright so you can chase my mother and leave Aretia to rot."
The duke's gaze shoots to the doorway and he sees me there. "Is that what the scribe told you?"
"She told me what you'd asked her to find. I figured it out myself. Where is my pelt?"
Duke Riorson sighs heavily and I look around his office, realizing exactly how packed full it is. All three of the fliers are there, and Catriona is livid. Most of the council members I've met are there too- Rory Tavis on the duke's left, Xaden's aunt on his right, and Liam's parents among them, along with some of the other people I've met around my age like Xaden's cousin Bodhi, and several others I've only passed in the halls. Is that the Duke of Llewellyn? I can't see all of the faces in the room, but of the ones I can see, the anger is not solely aimed at Xaden.
Some of them don't even look all that surprised.
The duke murmurs something I can't hear, and the people on either side of him, the ones meant to be his closest advisors and supporters, both look unhappy with him. Rory Tavis says something else I don't catch, and then looks up and begins ushering the others out of the room. He promises renegotiations will continue after lunch.
I step aside, letting the flow of people go past me. I nod to Bodhi as he passes. He looks like he's going to say something, but changes his mind.
The duke sits back down at his desk, but now his shoulders sag and he sighs.
"Come in, Lieutenant Sorrengail," he says, and I realize it's been weeks since I heard my rank and my mother's name behind it. "You've finished the translation work?"
"Hardly, but I think I know what you're asking." I steady myself. "The Krovlish selkie… she gave her pelt to her sister in law because the woman's husband was going to beat her to death. I think it has to be freely given."
He doesn't look at me, but up at Xaden, and I almost think he's going to have the gall to ask.
He doesn't.
The chest is small, but I've learned to recognize most of the runes set into the lacquer now. It's probably the most heavily warded thing I've seen here; I think it could survive a dragon setting it on fire and then sitting on it.
He doesn't open it. He just hands Xaden a key and leaves the room.
Xaden opens the chest slowly, and I watch with the habitual attention of a scribe, noticing details I want to make note of later. The way his hands pause before he lifts the lid. The wetness of his eyes. How reverently he reaches into the box and pulls it out.
My first thought is that it looks like a baby blanket in soft grey wool. He unfolds it, and I think it can't possibly work, it's so small and there's so much of him. When he sweeps it around his shoulders like a cloak, though, it ripples and spreads and somehow it reaches to the ground by the time it comes to rest.
When Xaden looks at me, it's so intense I would have flinched, a month ago.
"Will you come with me?"
"To the Bay?"
"First to the Bay, and everywhere else after?" He reaches out and takes my hand.
"Let's start with the Bay, and leave the after for after."