The tolling of the bells stretched through the evening cold, deep and heavy. Their echo lingered beneath the rafters, and only when it began to fade did the men in the feasting hall rise from their places.
The doors swung open, letting the evening cold into the warm, close air of the hall. Those gathered near the threshold stepped aside. Alexander went through first, the prince's men following behind him, moving more freely now than they had while seated at the table.
Ratibor walked at his side, still telling him about an old ford where horses had to be led by the reins through icy water that rose to a man's waist. Alexander listened with half an ear, answering now and then with a few brief words.
When the heavy doors closed behind them, the hall stood empty, yet the weight of the prince's men remained upon the benches: wood pressed low beneath them, cups knocked out of place, dark marks left by elbows on the boards.
Grease stains showed black between the cups and empty drinking ladles. The thick smell of meat, smoke, and sour mead had soaked into the wood.
Then the senior household steward emerged from a far corner and surveyed the tables as though he were counting not dishes but damage. He gave a curt nod.
The servants filed in quietly behind him. Household boys gathered the vessels, others scraped together the remains of the meal, and someone was already carrying buckets of warm water. A scraper rasped across the boards. A ladle struck the rim of a washing tub with a dull knock. Everything that an hour before had been called a princely feast became grease, scraps, and water in the servants' hands.
Alexander climbed to his chambers without another word.
Upstairs, dusk still held the room, though darkness had not yet settled. Two thick beeswax candles burned beside the bed, and a third stood near the window, hot wax creeping slowly down the dark wood.
A fire crackled in the stove, but its warmth scarcely reached the middle of the chamber. Near the walls, it failed at once. Cold breathed through the window so sharply that the shirt across his shoulders seemed thinner than his own skin.
He lowered himself carefully onto the edge of the bed, braced one hand against it, and removed his sword belt. The leather fell beside him, the metal giving a dull chime in the silence.
Alexander pulled off his boots, loosened his belt, and stripped away his outer clothes until only his undershirt and linen trousers remained. The boot on his injured side resisted him. He had to bend farther than he wanted, and a sudden pain stabbed beneath his ribs. He hissed through his teeth, waited for the wave to pass, and only then climbed into bed.
The bedding was made up of a coarse feather mattress, a woollen blanket, and a heavy coverlet of wolf pelts. An old bearskin lay dark across the foot of the bed, ready to be folded over him on the coldest nights. Alexander burrowed beneath the whole weight of it, carefully tucked a rolled edge of the wolfskin beneath his injured ribs, and settled onto his side.
At first the fur was cold and stiff, smelling of smoke, old wool, and the damp rankness of an animal hide. Slowly, it began to take the warmth of his body. The pain in his side did not leave. It merely sank deeper, like a coal beneath ashes.
The bed creaked softly under his weight.
His wounds had nearly healed, but the moment Alexander lay down, his body made itself known again. Every deep breath burned along his ribs; his shoulder ached, his thigh remained stiff and tight, and his left arm tired quickly.
During the day, before the others, he kept his back straight, his voice steady, his face composed. Now all he could do was keep his breathing even and try not to let the pain break its rhythm.
He closed his eyes, but sleep would not come.
The feasting hall would not leave him. It remained before his eyes with painful clarity: Ratibor's heavy hand upon his shoulder, Zhadan's fingers wet with wine, Miroslav stroking his beard with slow deliberation, Stanislav's gaze fixed upon him throughout the evening, never shifting, never giving ground.
All of it had followed him into the chamber. It remained there with the pain and would not let him sleep.
Alexander closed his eyes and still saw them before him. Then, through the pain, exhaustion, and the faint smoke of the lamp, another light began to emerge: old, hazed with smoke, a murky yellow.
It took him a moment to understand that the light had already been inside him.
The low canopy above his bed faded, and in its place a great table appeared: men gathered around it, the smell of wax, wet wool near the doorway, and smoke worked deep into the walls.
Grand Prince Yaroslav sat at the head of the table, lean and composed, his face weary, his hands still. He scarcely moved and never raised his voice, yet whenever he lifted his eyes, the man speaking began to choose his words more carefully.
Behind his elder brothers, a little apart from the princely table, stood a boy.
Alexander recognised his younger self. A sword hung at his hip, and he watched the council with little interest. Back then, it had all seemed like a long conversation among grown men: strange names, lands, gifts, quarrels, old grievances.
Now he stood beside the boy like a shadow, watching everyone at once his former self, his father, his brothers, the boyars around the table. He did not understand how he had come to be there. Whether it was a dream or a memory risen from some buried depth, he could not tell.
He only listened.
His father's council dragged on, dry and protracted. They spoke of lands, revenues, roads, districts, and tribute of men who served one lord, paid another, and owed something to a third.
"Did all the furs arrive from the northern district?" Yaroslav asked quietly.
"All of them, my prince."
"Who counted them there?"
"The district steward and Borislav's men."
"Was one of my own stewards present for the count?"
Someone at the table stopped rubbing a thumb along the rim of his cup.
"No, my prince. He waited for the wagons here in Kyiv."
Yaroslav nodded, as though he had heard precisely what he expected.
"Let Borislav continue as he has. But at the next count, place one of ours beside him. His men may carry the furs. The measure must be the prince's."
The scribe quickly entered the order into the record.
The Alexander of that time had scarcely listened. He adjusted the strap of his sword and turned his eyes towards the window again.
The Alexander who stood there now listened to every word, and with each one more questions rose within him.
He knew too little.
The thought weighed upon him more heavily than the pain. Pain, at least, could be found in his side, his ribs, his shoulder.
Ignorance was everywhere.
What truly fed power in this land? Who controlled the revenues from furs and wax? Who held the trade routes through the principalities? Who owed what to whom, and whom did they fear more than they feared their prince?
Who held the river crossings? Who collected the tolls? In whose chests did silver linger on its way to the prince? Who at the table smiled not for him, but for his own advantage? Where did an oath of service end, and where did true fear begin?
The questions returned, tangled together, caught upon one another, and always led him back to the same place.
At some point, he realised that he was no longer trying to decide whom he could trust.
He was trying to learn how to hold them by the throat.
Beyond the wall, the final bell struck heavily. The sound passed through him, low and muffled beneath his skin, along his ribs, through the pain he had almost forced into silence.
Alexander opened his eyes.
The chamber was dark.
"Lord... save my soul."
Morning came grey and cold. Fog lay low over the courtyard, clinging to the awnings, creeping into the passageways, and muffling everything that usually betrayed the life of the princely terem: footsteps, shouted orders, the groan of the gates.
Alexander rose long before the household had truly awakened. When he sat on the edge of the bed and lowered his feet to the floor, a dull, familiar pain answered in his side. It no longer irritated him. It merely reminded him it was there.
There was little time.
The thought did not come to him. It was already sitting on the edge of the bed.
Grey, dry, patient.
It turned in its fingers things that did not yet exist: days, names, debts, other men's glances, lies not yet spoken. Each invisible click sounded behind his temple.
The council, the retinue, the boyars.
The thought counted through them again and again until the same fracture began to show beneath each one. Pain stabbed more sharply through his side, as though his body too had been entered into that silent reckoning.
Alexander drew a slow breath.
Then the thought spoke without a voice.
"You will be too late, and they will begin to rule in your place"
He did not answer.
He set his feet on the floor, rose, and crossed to the washstand. The water in the basin was bitterly cold, with a thin, cloudy film gathered along the rim. Alexander cupped it in both hands and splashed it over his face.
The cold burned his skin and forced a deep breath from him. The chamber became only a chamber again: bed, wall, basin, grey light at the window.
Alexander raised his head towards the bronze mirror. A young man with a wet face stared back at him from the blurred reflection.
He remained there a little longer, then took the cloth lying nearby and slowly dried himself. Breakfast was already waiting on a bench by the wall, brought in before he woke: bread, salted fish, and a cup of mead.
He had no appetite, but he sat down and forced himself to swallow a few mouthfuls. He could not remain there any longer.
When he stepped outside, Gridni were waiting by the door as always. Sleepy and grim-faced, they straightened at once when they saw the prince and followed him without a word.
He walked towards Saint Sophia faster than his wounds allowed. Each step sent a brief flare of pain through his side, but Alexander did not slow. The pain was useful. It kept his thoughts from straying.
At the entrance he paused only long enough to catch his breath. The cold air of the courtyard remained behind him. From within came the heavy warmth of the church, not yet fully stirred by the morning service. The Gridni fell quiet of their own accord. The threshold of Saint Sophia cut away every unnecessary sound.
The church held the dense silence of early morning. Cold rose from the stone slabs. Beneath the vaults lingered incense, old soot, and the dry sweetness of wax. The smell was neither fresh nor clean. It held the smoke of hundreds of flames and the breath of prayers long since given to the stone.
The hanging lamps burned dimly, not yet fully alive. Off to one side, a young attendant was trimming soot from a wick. When he saw the prince, he bent so sharply that the candle stand beneath his hand trembled and gave a quiet chime.
Beyond that, their path narrowed: a passageway, the guards left at the entrance, brief bows, the heavy door of the book chamber. Behind him remained the church's half-light and the gold of the Orans.
He entered.
The door opened reluctantly with a low wooden sigh, and the smell of leather, dust, wax, and old ink drifted towards him.
Alexander looked around at once.
Empty.
He did not linger by the entrance. He moved quickly between the shelves towards the table where he had sat several days earlier, sorting through charters and books. The table remained where it had been, and so did the bench.
Only Ioann was absent, and no one waited for him with scrolls already laid out.
Several pieces of writing had been left on the table: two wax tablets, a rolled charter tied with a darkened cord, and a thin booklet bound in soft leather, not yet returned to its shelf. Perhaps they had been left there the night before, or set out for the morning.
Alexander reached first for the charter.
He unrolled it and began to read, but quickly saw that it was of no use to him. Some theological text words of sin, obedience, and prayer. He put it back and reached for the wax tablets.
A faint scraping sound stopped him.
Alexander turned and saw a young monk seated at a side table.
The monk sat slightly hunched, sharpening a quill with a small knife. His eyes were still swollen with sleep, and a crease from a rough pillow marked one cheek. He was so intent upon his task that he had not heard the door open, had not heard the prince cross the library, had not even heard the charters stir nearby.
For several moments the monk continued with his small morning labour. He trimmed the edge of the quill, blew the pale shavings from his fingers, and tested the tip against his thumbnail.
Almost finished, he raised his eyes without thinking.
And froze.
At first, he merely realised that someone was watching him.
Then he understood who it was.
He sprang to his feet so abruptly that the knife rang against the tabletop and the quill rolled towards the edge. The monk made a motion to catch it, but saw the prince approaching and stopped where he stood.
"My prince…" he breathed, bending into a bow. "Forgive me, my prince. I did not know you would come so early…"
He faltered and glanced towards the quill at the edge of the table, but did not dare reach for it. It lay there thin and helpless, its freshly cut point still damp, and all the monk's morning work seemed to hang with it over the edge.
Alexander said nothing and approached in silence.
His gaze moved from the monk to the quill.
It rolled a little farther: the width of a fingernail, then farther still. In the empty library, that tiny movement seemed louder than it should have been. A little more and the quill would fall, tap lightly against the floorboards, and break the silence so cleanly that both of them would flinch.
The monk saw it too, but did not move.
"To Father Ioann, my prince?" he managed more quietly. "I will take you to him."
Alexander reached the table.
The quill came to the edge, rocked once, and stopped beneath his fingers.
He lifted it calmly, as though it were the very thing he had crossed the room to retrieve, and placed it in front of the monk.
"Lead the way."
The monk took the quill in both hands, far too carefully for something so light. He bowed in haste and went ahead.
The passages between the cabinets were narrow. Alexander followed, ducking slightly beneath a low beam. Shelves stretched away on either side, crowded with chests, bundles of charters, rolled hides, and tablets tied together with cords. The air smelled of old parchment and dry wood.
The monk walked quickly, glancing back again and again to make sure the prince had not fallen behind. Once, his sleeve brushed against a bundle of scrolls. He flinched, steadied it with one hand, and went on more carefully.
Beyond the last row of cabinets, the chamber opened out a little.
There, beside a wall lined with chests, sat the senior keeper, Ioann.
He was sorting charters at a low table, setting one nearer to himself, another aside, and holding a third open with his fingers because the scroll stubbornly strained to curl back upon itself. The lamp above the table trembled, making the letters seem to shift for a moment beneath his hand.
Ioann pinned the edge of the scroll beneath a bone tally and raised his head. The monk stopped at the edge of the lamplight.
"Father Ioann… the prince has come."
Ioann rose quietly, moved the knife away from the edge of the table, smoothed his sleeve, and bowed low and calmly.
"How may I serve you, my prince?"
Alexander did not answer. His gaze passed over the table, the charters laid across it, and the narrow bench against the wall where a bundle of blank tablets had been left.
The young monk made a quick movement to clear them away, but Alexander was already there. He lifted the tablets, placed them on the edge of a nearby chest, and pulled the bench towards the table.
The wood scraped briefly across the floor.
Ioann said nothing. He merely lowered his eyes a fraction, taking note of the gesture.
Alexander sat opposite him.
"I need records showing where the districts and villages lie, how much land belongs to the prince, how much to the boyars and the monasteries. Where iron and salt are mined. Where the chief apiaries and wax works are. Where the most furs are gathered. Which roads and river crossings lead to Kyiv, who holds the tolls, when the boat caravans sail down the Dnieper and who commands them. The names of the men who own these things and the men who control them."
Ioann listened without interrupting.
At first, his expression remained composed. Then his gaze lingered upon Alexander a little longer not with fear, but with caution, as though the old man were making certain he had heard correctly.
Alexander was not asking for a book or a charter. He wanted to see the whole land at once.
Grain, iron, furs, roads, tolls, boats, men all of it brought into a single order, as though Rus' were already a book that someone had simply neglected to place before him.
Ioann slowly lowered his gaze to the charters spread across the table.
When Alexander finished, Ioann continued to look at them rather than at him. After several moments, he said quietly:
"What is kept here is not a general reckoning of the land, my prince, but testimony concerning separate matters: endowments, disputes, grants, ancient rights. Every charter belongs to its own affair, its own witnesses, and its own memory."
He touched a bundle of charters carefully with his fingertips.
"There is no such compilation here. The lands of Rus' have never been gathered into a single book. One part is kept by the stewards, another by the district governors, a third by merchants and monasteries. Tolls, crossings, and boats belong to separate affairs, and every affair keeps its own memory."
Alexander slowly surveyed the cabinets, the seals hanging from cords, the tallies, bindings, and chests. Everything had been tied, sealed, marked, and carefully returned to its place. Order showed in every cord and every tally.
And yet the picture he needed was nowhere among them. They knew how to preserve charters, but no one had brought together the things upon which power rested.
"My father gathered the finest library in Rus'," Alexander said quietly. "And nowhere in it is there even an approximate reckoning of the land?"
Ioann did not spread his hands in helplessness. He merely lowered his eyes to the floor.
"Grand Prince Yaroslav commanded that the word of God be gathered here, along with Greek wisdom, law, and judgement. As for the land…"
He paused, as though searching for a word that would offend neither the prince nor those who were absent.
"The land is held by charter, custom, witness, and the memory of the man who sits upon it. No one has ever gathered it into a single book."
Alexander clenched his jaw.
Again.
The treasury kept its own account. The stewards had theirs, and the district governors theirs. The merchants counted separately, as did the monasteries. Each held only a piece: his own memory, his own truth, his own chest, his own seal.
And all of it was called order so long as no one tried to see the whole.
He picked up the nearest scroll, looked at the seal, and set it down more sharply than before. The lead seal struck the tabletop with a dry knock.
"Memory again," he said quietly. "You keep using that word as though it were meant to take the place of a charter."
Alexander raised his eyes.
"Whose memory?"
Ioann's gaze lingered on the lead seal lying upon the table.
The answer was simple.
Its consequences were not.
"The memory of those who were present when the matter was done, my prince."
"People?"
"People. Scribes, stewards, toll collectors all who saw, who received and gave, who held the keys or bore the seal. A charter tells how a thing ought to be. They remember how it truly was."
The young monk lowered his eyes to the charters, as though he had returned to his work. But he did not turn a single page.
Alexander did not look away from the scroll at once.
"And they all remember?"
Ioann looked only at the prince.
"Every man remembers something."
The answer came too calmly. Alexander narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Every one of them?"
Ioann was silent for a moment.
"Not everything, and not always, my prince. But a man remembers best what serves his own advantage."
Alexander rose too quickly.
The bench grated across the floor.
He swept his gaze over the shelves, bundles of charters, chests, and scrolls. Hundreds of books and decades of other men's labour were kept here: the memory of reigns, judgements, endowments, prayers, and deaths. Knowledge of the dead was guarded more carefully than knowledge of the living and their revenues.
And among all of it, there was almost nothing that would help him rule tomorrow morning.
His fingers began tapping of their own accord against the edge of the nearest shelf. Alexander took several steps between the cabinets and stopped beside a bundle of charters.
If not here, then where?
With the boyars? The stewards? The merchants? The monasteries?
Or a little with each of them, and therefore whole with none?
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a moment. His thoughts moved too quickly, breaking against one another. Every road, the instant it appeared, divided into ten more: land, tribute, men, customs, ancient rights, new oaths.
Silence filled the book chamber.
It was so dense that Alexander did not immediately hear Ioann move.
The senior keeper stood beside a shelf of charters, looking not at the prince but at the young monk near the passage. His gaze was quiet, yet the monk understood it before a word was spoken.
"Go to the singers," Ioann said softly. "Tell them I will be delayed."
The monk bowed and left at once. His first steps sounded ordinary, but once he passed behind the rows of shelves, he quickened his pace.
Before long, the passages between the cabinets swallowed the sound of the monk's footsteps. It was not the door or some distant wall. The library itself took them in, softly and without a trace, as it took in everything that was not meant to remain when certain words were spoken.
Alexander and Ioann were alone.
The chamber did not close around them all at once. First it smothered the last sounds near the table. Then it drew them inward, between the chests and shelves, before closing over them again beneath the low beams dense with dust, wax, and the smell of old leather.
Somewhere beyond the walls, wood struck wood. A voice answered dully, but the words dissolved before they reached the chamber. Then there was nothing to hear but the breathing of the room itself.
Nothing moved within it.
Only one scroll at the edge of the table was slowly trying to curl shut again, as though unwilling to remain open before the prince.
Alexander stood without moving.
Silence was no longer merely the absence of sound.
It stood between them.
Small things became distinct: his own breathing, the brief creak of the strap across his chest, the faint sputter of oil in the lamp. Somewhere beneath his clothing, his heart beat steadily and dully, too loud for so empty a chamber.
Ioann stood just as still beside the shelf.
He simply watched Alexander, and there was more than dutiful attention in his gaze now. The old man had understood something.
Or had decided to test whether he had understood it correctly.
Ioann was the first to break the silence.
"My prince."
The words fell quietly between them, yet after so long a silence they sounded almost hard.
"What do you intend to do with such a reckoning, my prince?"
Alexander narrowed his eyes.
"I have already told you."
"You told me that you wish to know. I am asking what you will do once you know."
Alexander did not answer at once.
The question was too direct.
Ioann did not lower his eyes, glance towards the charters, or pretend the question had been asked in passing. For the senior keeper, it was a small thing, almost imperceptible, but such small things were precisely what revealed the most.
He was not asking out of curiosity.
Interesting.
"So that I do not rule blind," Alexander said at last. "I do not need this knowledge for its own sake. I need to understand where the principality's throat lies, and whose hand is already upon it."
Ioann remained silent.
"If I go to the boyars, they will show me only what it profits them to show. If I go to the stewards, each man will hide what is his. If I go to the merchants, they will name not the truth but the price from which they find it convenient to bargain. And if I begin pressing them at once, the city will learn what I am searching for before I understand what I can lay hold of."
Alexander ran his fingers along the edge of the shelf. The wood was dry and rough beneath them.
"I do not need the names of lands. I need to know through whose hands those lands pass. Where power truly flows. Who can close a road, hide tribute, delay the boats, raise a price, bar a storehouse, or forget the charter that matters. That is what I need."
Ioann did not answer immediately.
For a moment, something flickered in his eyes not fear yet, nor agreement, but a brief spark of recognition.
During his long years beside Yaroslav, Ioann had heard many requests from princes: find a charter, recall an oath, name the man through whom one might speak with the boyars or the monasteries.
He had expected the same from the young prince a plea for help, for support, for the names of older men upon whom he might rely.
But Alexander was not looking for support.
He wanted to take hold of everything himself.
He wanted to see threats before they became words. He wanted to know who would lie, who would remain silent, who would be first to extend a hand and who would use that same hand to close around the principality's throat.
Too much for a first question. Too soon, and too plainly asked.
Ioann felt his breathing grow shallow.
The young prince was looking at him differently now. Not with anger. Not with cruelty.
Worse.
With attention.
Ioann was suddenly, painfully aware of how absurd his fear was. Before him stood a youth of perhaps twenty, still young in the face, his body only recently risen from the edge of death. Not long ago, Alexander had questioned, grown angry, hurried, and looked to his elders for support.
Now he asked for none.
He stood calmly, and that calm sent cold beneath Ioann's ribs.
Grand Prince Yaroslav's gaze had also known how to hold a man in place, but it had carried the weight of years already lived: authority, habit, long memory, the unquestioned right of one whom men had obeyed for too long to demand an explanation.
Alexander possessed something else.
Precision.
Under that gaze, everything Ioann tried to contain seemed suddenly visible: shoulders held too straight, a breath delayed, one finger pressing harder into the edge of his sleeve, the brief movement of his eyes towards the shelf of charters.
Ioann lowered his gaze to the documents.
Once, he had met Alexander's eyes with ease. They had held impatience, pain, stubbornness, and sometimes anger all the things that could still be called youth and checked by the word of an elder.
Now the prince did not look away, nor did he accept Ioann's silence as an answer. He simply waited, as though former tutelage, Ioann's age, and even his rank no longer altered anything between them.
The man before him was no longer a pupil, nor the son of a great house whom an old man might still guide.
Ioann adjusted the edge of his sleeve, then stopped his hand the instant he realised what he was doing.
For years, he had read other men's hands in their writing: where a scribe had hurried, where he had trembled, where a word had been added later, where a line had been scraped clean with a knife. Such details told him more than the charter itself.
Now he was being read in the same way.
Not ink and not parchment.
He himself had become an unsealed charter, with fear, the habit of silence, and too many years spent in the service of powerful men showing plainly across its surface.
Ioann drew a slow breath, careful not to let his chest rise too visibly. Every movement had acquired a price. A quick answer would betray alarm. An even voice would reveal caution. His silence had already become a confession, though he had confessed nothing.
Alexander did not hurry him. That was the hardest part.
He did not press him with words or raise his voice. He merely left the silence between them and watched as though he had already found the end of a thread, but chose not to pull waiting instead for it to tremble of its own accord in another man's fingers.
Ioann had to answer now.
He had to measure out enough truth to keep the rest for himself.
He had already shaped the first careful sentence when Alexander denied him the chance to speak it.
"You know someone who can help me," he said more quietly.
Ioann did not answer. His face remained composed, but his eyes narrowed slightly, as though the old man did not quite deny what he had heard.
"My prince," he said at last, "useful men may be found in any matter. But not every name should be spoken merely because a prince has need of it."
"Then such a man exists."
Ioann gave a slight shake of his head.
"You heard more than I said."
"But you did not say otherwise."
The silence between them drew thinner.
Alexander nodded as though he accepted the refusal and stepped away from the table. His gaze passed over the shelves, the chests, the bundles of charters, the cords hung with seals.
"Very well."
Ioann raised his eyes.
"Very well," Alexander repeated. "Then I will put it differently. I need a man who knows at least some part of what I asked about. Districts, tolls, crossings, merchants, stewards, ancient rights, other men's debts. If he knows more, so much the better."
The old man listened without moving.
"In return, I will give him protection. If he needs shadow, he will remain in shadow. I never saw him. You never named him. No one will know that he spoke to me."
Something barely shifted in Ioann's face.
Alexander saw it.
"If he needs something else, I will give him my word, silver, bread, land, a place at court. Or mercy for someone he asks me not to touch."
What Ioann heard in those words was not self-assurance.
Worse.
Alexander spoke as though all of it truly ought to be enough.
"My prince," Ioann said quietly, "you promise protection you do not yet possess."
Alexander did not smile.
"I already possess it."
The old man studied him more closely.
Alexander stood calmly. He neither argued nor asked to be believed. He simply allowed Ioann to see that the boy who had once needed others to fear for him was no longer there.
Ioann watched him for a long time, testing not the certainty itself, but what stood beneath it.
"You ask a great deal, my prince."
"I offer more than I ask."
To that, Ioann gave no answer.
Alexander stepped closer and stopped beside him, one shoulder near the shelf. Not opposite him.
Beside him.
As though they were both looking at the same invisible thing.
The old man did not step away.
He stood straight and composed, though the fingers hidden beneath his sleeve tightened.
Alexander nodded slowly several times, looking ahead at the dark bindings and the charters tied with cord.
"Then I will have to search for him myself."
Ioann remained silent.
The prince raised his eyes towards the low, smoke-darkened beams. The lamplight trembled, and the shadows of the shelves lay across one another like old roads long since forgotten.
"I will not have to search for long," Alexander continued quietly. "You have already shown me where to begin."
Ioann turned his head slowly. There was no anger in the young prince's eyes, no threat only a calm resolve already settled within him.
That gaze was harder to bear than any shout.
The old man endured it only a moment longer. Then he bowed, slowly and heavily.
"Forgive me, my prince. In this matter, I will not serve you."
Alexander leaned slightly towards him.
"You - not."
Ioann did not answer.
He stood beside the shelf with one hand resting upon a bundle of charters. His fingers remained on the cord, dry and motionless. His face was pale and old, but not afraid.
Alexander waited, but the old man did not falter. If anything, something within him seemed to draw tighter and hold.
Only then did Alexander breathe out softly.
He could not leave empty-handed. Not today. He needed an answer now, while the trail was still warm.
He returned to the table and sat upon the bench where he had sat before.
His movements were calm. Too calm after everything that had been said.
He drew the short knife from his belt.
Ioann followed it with his eyes.
Alexander said nothing. He placed one hand upon the table, nudged a charter aside with his thumb, and drove the knife into the wood.
The blade sank almost halfway and remained there, trembling faintly.
Ioann went pale.
Silence still filled the chamber, but he felt something tear within it.
It was as though the chamber itself had cried out without sound not from fear of the prince, but because iron had entered a place where iron did not belong.
Ioann was not a man to be frightened by steel. He had lived too long at a prince's court and seen too much for that. But here, the blade was not a threat.
It was an insult.
Here, the written word was guarded from fire, damp, mice, the greed of strangers, and the forgetfulness of men. Even the knife used to shape a quill was handled with care, because one misplaced stroke could alter another man's land, debt, or name.
And now a blade stood buried in the table.
Ioann drew a slow breath.
He had served Yaroslav at this very table. Across the charters laid upon it had passed oaths, lands, judgements, remembrances of the dead, and the debts the living owed them.
All the things that outlived princes and remained after they were gone.
If Alexander was willing to drive a blade into this table for the sake of an answer, then he did not see memory here.
He saw an obstacle.
Ioann straightened.
Alexander sat without moving. His hand no longer touched the knife.
He merely waited, but Ioann did not move.
Then Alexander raised his eyes to him.
"Sit."