Chapter 4

Four

Kyrith

“ L ibrarian? I’m sorry, Librarian?”

I blink, coming back to myself slowly. It takes me far longer than it should to pull my consciousness from the fabric of the building and focus on the magister in front of me.

He’s old—it’s practically a requisite for teaching at the University—though I remember when he was just a shy student silently hiding away in a corner of the history section on the first floor. He was far slimmer back then, but age and an academic’s comfortable salary have gifted him a wide gut that overflows his belt and a neck that’s almost as wide as his skull. His grey hair is thinning atop his head, but the condition doesn’t appear to affect the bushy moustache on his upper lip. His face is lined with the echoes of a hundred past laughs, and his thin spectacles are wonky on his crooked nose.

All these things combined give the impression of a large walrus.

“Magister Hopkinson,” I acknowledge, congratulating myself for remembering the name.

He’s from a liminal offshoot of the Winthrop family, if I remember rightly. One of their daughters eloped with an inept some… Gosh, it must be a hundred years ago, now.

Feeling ancient, I turn to regard him, only to find him staring at me expectantly. Damn. He asked me a question, didn’t he? My focus has been atrocious since yesterday when Dakari cracked me, but I can’t decide if that’s a symptom of my condition or simply a side effect of my understandable fretting.

“I’m sorry, magister,” I mumble. “I have much on my mind.”

He nods, understanding. “It is a huge task you have, keeping this place so well organised.”

The Arcanaeum does most of that by itself, but I don’t correct him. Better to let them all believe that the building is controlled by me than risk someone finding the truth.

At the reminder, I adjust the pile of books between us again.

“I was just saying that, as this is the first year in recorded history that every student in a year group has been admitted to the Arcanaeum, it would be lovely to hold my class in one of the study areas. If you’ll permit it, of course.”

I’ve admitted everyone in the class? Is this because of Northcliff? And what does he mean by ‘in recorded history’? Do they no longer remember history before I became Librarian?

The Arcanaeum nudges me, a drawer popping out from beneath my desk. Inside is a single piece of paper printed with large letters.

YES

It wants the Ackland boy here, regularly, and it wants his ancestor’s grimoire. Why?

My gut wants to refuse outright, but the paper gives me pause.

The Arcanaeum has never been so forthright with its demands as it’s being now. I have to trust that’s for a reason. My mind flits to my cracked hand, hidden carefully from onlookers behind my stack of books.

After all these years, I cannot believe the library would want me harmed. Yet it seems insistent on bringing those with the ability to do so inside my sanctuary.

“It’s perfectly fine,” Magister Hopkinson says, brushing aside his robes in disappointment as my silence becomes awkward. “I understand. A group of students in the Arcanaeum would likely result in several broken rules and?—”

“I’ll permit it on a trial basis,” I cut in. “I will clear the study area in Conjurer’s Hall for your use. How often is your class?”

Surprise blooms over his face, stretching those laugh lines into a well-used, jolly smile. “Three times a week. Oh, this is wonderful news. Thank you, Librarian. Thank you!”

“There will be rules,” I hasten to add. “I cannot just have a group of students running amok…”

“Of course.”

I doubt any rule I can come up with will dampen the old magister’s spirits at this point.

“I shall personally ensure every young arcanist is on their best behaviour. Shall we start tomorrow? Ten o’clock?”

“Yes.” He turns on his heel, but I frown, and add, “Magister, which class is it?”

“First years,” he answers, with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “For all my sins, I’m responsible for Arcanist Studies this year. It does get terribly dull, repeating the same history year after year, but perhaps you’ll be able to add your own insights. You’ve lived it, after all! And you’re more than welcome to join us, of course.”

No , I think to myself. I haven’t lived it at all. I’ve been dead and confined for most of it.

Rather than ruin his excitement with that uncharacteristically self-pitying thought, I smile and nod. “It could be interesting to sit in on one or two classes.”

The rest of the arcanists in the Rotunda, who were not-so-subtly eavesdropping on our conversation, break out in whispered murmurs as he leaves, and I sigh, popping away from my desk before someone else can approach me about hosting parties or something equally ludicrous.

I have no idea why the building is suddenly feeling the urge to be social, but aside from the dread that comes at the thought of seeing North again, I’m almost…excited.

All those years ago, I was looking forward to my classes. After my resurrection, I lamented the loss of what might’ve been had I gone to lectures with my cohort. Would I have enjoyed it? Would I have made friends? I would’ve been a good student, eager as I was.

I suppose everything that Hopkinson will be teaching is something I’ve read already.

Still, perhaps there might be something to be gleaned from listening in. I have always liked the magister, after all. Something about the loners always calls to me. It’s why I enjoy— enjoyed —Galileo’s unwitting company.

I spend the evening turning the small study area in Conjuration Hall into something more resembling a classroom, or at least, how I hope a classroom looks. I checked several textbooks on the education of young arcanists, and they all disagreed, so I settled for desks facing the front, and a chalkboard at one end.

Then I went away, returned, and decided it was too severe. So I did away with desks, replacing them with bright mandala pouffes instead.

By the time Magister Hopkinson steps into the room the following morning, I’ve rearranged it a half-dozen times. Finally, I settle for a space where small tables and colourful cushions dominate, with armchairs around the edges of the room for those who prefer them. I’ve layered the floor with comfortable rugs and added thick tapestries to the walls to warm the place up a bit and dampen any noise the students might make.

“Amazing!” the magister comments as he steps inside, and I relax a little.

I’ve chosen an armchair for myself against the back wall, where I can hide my left arm in the shadows, though I can’t really sit in it. It felt less awkward than just hovering in a corner like the spook I am.

“Is there anything else you need?” I check. “I’ve not been in a classroom in several centuries, so I wasn’t sure what was required.”

Magister Hopkinson shrugs. “They haven’t changed that much, surely? I mean, there are no electronics, but I suspected as much, so I brought the old-school equipment with me.”

He taps the large case by his side, then lifts it onto the table at the front.

Frowning, because I hadn’t realised that would be an issue, I consider for the hundredth time updating the Arcanaeum. I’ve been resisting because the building itself has never seemed keen, and because my presence tends to fry the devices patrons have brought in.

I didn’t hesitate to bring in proper indoor plumbing. Perhaps I’m becoming obdurate in my old age.

By the time I come back to myself again, the magister has finished setting up a dusty lantern projector and the first students have begun trickling in.

“Boss!”

Oh no. He’s in this class, too?

“Mr Winthrop,” I acknowledge him, pre-emptively ghosting away to avoid the first hug of the day. “Perhaps Magister Hopkinson will be able to teach you the art of silence in these classes.”

He grins so widely that those deadly dimples make an appearance, and I swear the girl under his arm swoons a little.

“North, over here!” Lambert calls across the room, apparently physically incapable of lowering his voice. “Boss lady is sitting in on the snooze-fest. We might actually learn something.”

“You might learn something if you looked at the board, rather than down Miss Talcott’s shirt,” Magister Hopkinson calls, unfazed by Lambert’s casual disdain for learning. “Now, everyone, get settled, and do try not to get us banned.”

My fingers twitch, and I want nothing more than to give Lambert a strike for his constant yelling, but I refrain. Selfishly, I want to at least experience one class before I banish them all and go back to my quiet life.

Lambert claims a cushion as close to my chair as possible, making me groan, and North takes one on the other side of the table before the—admittedly very pretty—Talcott girl can sit down. She looks at her beau, as if expecting him to object, but he just shrugs.

“Sorry, sweet. Bros before ho’s.”

“Mr Winthrop, that’s a strike for sexist language,” I hiss, his blank card in my hand once more.

The Talcott girl offers me a small smile. “Sisters before misters, huh, Librarian?”

“Hey, you have to give her a strike now,” Lambert protests. “That was sexist too.”

Growling, I allow his card to dissipate, unblemished, as Miss Talcott finds a different table. “Mr Winthrop?—”

“Okay, okay, I think we’re all set up now!” Hopkinson calls from the middle of the room, where his projector is beaming a steady square of light onto the wall.

I quickly turn the paint white, clearing up the image, and he nods his thanks. While I was busy scolding Lambert, the rest of the class has arrived. Arcanists generally attend the University of Arcane Arts after completing study at an inept university, alongside their own private magical tutelage. So the classes can be fairly diverse in age, but it’s rare to see anyone younger than their early twenties in the Arcanaeum, and this is no exception.

Still, they seem young to me. Perhaps having them sit on cushions was a mistake. Not that desks would make them appear older but surely it couldn’t hurt.

Then, at the very last second before the clock on the wall strikes ten, Galileo slides in, claiming an armchair in the back-most corner without anyone noticing. Is he in this class, too? All three of them in one place, so soon after they left together to plot magic-knows-what?

If I still had skin, it would be crawling. As it is, I level them all with a suspicious glare.

“Now, for the first ever lesson permitted inside the Arcanaeum, I thought we could begin with a history of the building.” Hopkinson slips the first slide into place, and I smile softly at a familiar painting.

“No one has seen the building from outside for centuries, but this is the last painting we have of it as part of the university, dated 1502. Five years later, the building disappeared, and was only rediscovered almost a decade after that, when Thomas McKinley—a divinator who had spent years searching for the building—sarcastically knocked on a door and spoke the incantation ‘ ad Arcanaeum ’.”

He looks at me as if he’s waiting for me to add something.

I shrug. “I was just as surprised as he was.”

Thomas was a liminal bastard who’d been claimed by the Magister McKinley when he failed to produce a true-born adept heir. His admission was a terrifying thing, and the process was messy as we both tried to figure out what was happening. I don’t think even the Arcanaeum itself knew what was going on.

“Since then, the Arcanaeum has judged patrons and admitted those with the strongest magical lineage?—”

I frown and interrupt, “That’s not the criteria at all, or you yourself wouldn’t have been admitted.”

His own bloodline is one of my favourites because its members tended to eschew the entrenched notion of adept purity, but he’s weak—despite having scraped a pass mark in divination to acquire his title. That’s why he teaches the earlier years, and not the more advanced schools of magic.

Hopkinson freezes, eyes lighting up. “It isn’t?”

“No. It isn’t.” My eyes flicker over to North, only to recoil when I find him staring at me. “Continue, magister. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No, please do! This is fascinating.”

“Hopkinson’s got a hard-on for the Librarian,” someone mutters on the far side of the room.

Without thinking, I summon her card to my hand, tutting when I see a strike there already.

“Librarian, please,” Hopkinson interjects. “And, Maddy, that is quite enough. Do you not realise the learning potential we have here? The Librarian is a primary source.”

“What is the criteria for entry then?” North asks. “If it’s not bloodlines.”

Sighing as I allow Maddy’s card to dissipate, I stare him in the eye and answer as evenly as I can. “The Arcanaeum judges an arcanist by their worth. Not practising necromancy is a good start, as your family appears to have finally discovered.”

His hand fists on the table, but Lambert cuts in, defending him, “That’s just a rumour.”

I have to remind myself that laughing at him would be unprofessional, even if the evidence of those ‘rumours’ is right in front of him.

“Anyway,” Hopkinson continues. “The library was built alongside the university?—”

“It was built before the university,” I correct. “After the purges. It was intended as a stronghold in case history repeated itself and arcandom was under threat again. The university was established later, as a safe place to educate the recovering population.”

Hopkinson is enthralled, but I honestly can’t believe he’s getting so much of the history of the Arcanaeum wrong. How many generations have been misinformed like this when the answers are right here in the history section? The lack of critical thinking in modern academia is painful.

In response to my thoughts, the Arcanaeum perks up, creating a display of relevant texts in the foyer.

“Fascinating. And at what point did you become Librarian, if I might ask?” Hopkinson says. “Were you created with the building? Or installed later on?”

If I had breath, it would hiss between my teeth at the assumption that I was some magically conjured creature to be installed like a light fixture. But the foundations of the building sag a little as I realise that he genuinely doesn’t know. None of them do.

Even Galileo, who must’ve read a good portion of the collection in the relatively short time since he became a patron, is waiting expectantly for my answer.

They’ve never known an Arcanaeum without a Librarian, and I can hardly imagine Rector Carlton and the others were quick to admit to sacrificing a young woman, and the true reason why they ‘lost’ their precious repository.

“I was born in the year 1486,” I reply evenly. “A liminal with no idea of her arcanist parentage until I was found by a divinator. In those days, your numbers were so low that those with ‘incredible magical potential’ were sought out and inducted into the University to prevent inbreeding.”

“You were human?” Trust Lambert to blurt out the obvious. He twists on his pouffe, trapping me in an earnest blue-green stare.

“Once,” I admit, softly. “But that is all I will say on the matter.”

“If you were human, what’s your name?” he presses, seemingly forgetting that there’s an entire class surrounding us. “I bet it’s something pretty.”

“Lambert, that’s hardly appropriate,” Hopkinson stutters. “Anyway, as fascinating as this really is, we should move on. Now, the first arcanists who were readmitted were liminals…”

I break the eye contact, fixing my gaze on the projector again. Hopkinson doesn’t know—can’t possibly understand—that the reason I’ve frozen isn’t because of some perceived insult, but rather because for the first time in hundreds of years…someone cares .

And it’s Lambert , of all people.

“If she was born in 1486,” North grumbles, interrupting Hopkinson’s next slide—a copy of a letter detailing a firsthand account of one of my early patrons. “That made her old enough to be a student here at the time the building disappeared.”

So, for all his muscles, he can do basic maths. Should I give him a sticker? I glance at him—mistake—and his golden gaze pins me in place until I look back at the board.

Hopkinson is stalling, fiddling with his beard, clearly torn. For all that he’s meant to be teaching this class, I’m almost certain he would rather be sitting on a cushion with the other students, allowing me to take over.

A self-righteous part of me wants to do just that—to teach them exactly what the rector and the magisters chose to hide from their histories—and yet…

If they know the Arcanaeum is the product of forbidden magic, many arcanists would argue for the building’s destruction. For my destruction.

Once, I would’ve been one of them. The knowledge that this repository was built on lies and darkness was enough of a shock that, at first, I considered destroying it myself. There are certainly grimoires in the Vault below that—in the wrong hands—could lead to hundreds upon thousands of deaths.

But the Arcanaeum itself is not evil. Or, if it is, then so am I. It deserves to be protected and preserved for future generations.

“I can tell you about the first patrons,” I agree. “But the disappearance of the Arcanaeum was for good reason, and I shall say no more on that subject.”

Reading the new slide, I smile. “Ah, Emily Austin. One of the illegitimate descendants of the Carlton family. She was a lovely girl, very chatty—although that almost got her banned. Her academic focus was the school of illusion.” I pause. “She’s really over-exaggerating the place here… Ah, I see. She’s writing to her father, attempting to persuade him to legitimise her. Those were the early days. She soon wised up and was rid of him.”

Hopkinson has actually taken out his notebook now, scribbling away like he’s a young student all over again. “Fascinating. So the halls weren’t gilded back then?”

I muffle a snort. “I have never been so ostentatious a decorator as to use solid gold flooring in my designs, magister.”

Northcliff utters a cough that sounds suspiciously like “bullshit,” and before I can stop it, a book slides from one of the shelves and slaps him about the head.

Why is that so satisfying?