The Laos Keep library was a quiet, cavernous place — a cathedral of dust and parchment where the only movement came from drifting motes in the air and the slow turning of pages. Shafts of morning light filtered through the tall, narrow windows, cutting pale stripes across the oak tables and shelves laden with centuries of records.
In one of the deeper aisles, a boy sat cross-legged on the floor, a leather-bound tome open across his lap. His hair was black as midnight, his eyes darker still, the way a deep well looks when the sun fails to touch the water below. He was six years old, though his stillness belonged to someone far older.
"Young Master," Lucy's voice broke the hush, warm but edged with mild reproach. She came striding between the shelves, skirts brushing against the stone floor. "You've been here all day."
Logos didn't look up. "Not all day. I took a break to eat."
"That was… three hours ago," Lucy said, eyeing the stack of tomes beside him. "It's about time you got some sunlight before you start growing roots."
"I am not a plant, Lucy," Logos replied without missing a beat.
"Then stop acting like one." She didn't wait for his protest before stooping and scooping him up with practiced ease.
"I can walk," Logos muttered, his voice more resigned than annoyed.
"Yet here we are," Lucy said cheerfully, hefting him over her hip like a sack of grain — or, in his mind, a particularly sorry black sack of potatoes.
The heavy library doors creaked as she pushed them open. The cool, papery stillness gave way to the brightness of the late morning courtyard. Sunlight spilled across the cobbles, bringing with it the scents of fresh-cut grass and oiled leather.
Lucy carried him across the inner garden, where boxwood hedges lined gravel paths and the air hummed with bees moving between the flowers. At the far end, a pair of heavy oak doors stood ajar, brass bands gleaming. Beyond them lay the training yard.
It was alive with motion.
Men in padded gambesons and mail shirts drilled in lines, their blunted swords ringing as they struck and parried in measured rhythm. In one corner, archers loosed bolts at straw butts, the string-snaps and solid thuds punctuating the air like drumbeats.
Further off, near the far wall, a group of engineers clustered around something far larger than any man — a towering man-shaped frame of blackened steel and silvered runes, its armor plates removed to reveal the intricate lattice beneath. Thick bundles of conduit cable twisted like muscles under its limbs, and pale crystal rods glowed faintly where the sunlight touched them. Runes crawled in slow, steady pulses along its frame, feeding energy through its joints.
Logos' eyes locked onto it immediately.
Lucy followed his gaze and smiled faintly. "Ah. You're staring at the big toys again."
"They're not toys," Logos said, tone flat but certain. "That's a Model IV Armatus frame."
Lucy blinked down at him. "You're six."
"You've already told me that this year," Logos said, without looking away.
She opened her mouth to reply, but he continued, his voice quickening slightly as he examined the frame. "But it's useless. The Model IV was retired forty-two years ago, replaced by the VI series. The power distribution lattice on that one can't handle sustained high-output spells without a full purge cycle. It's slow to recalibrate between combat and transport modes, and the crystal conduit design is—"
"Do you even understand all those words?" Lucy cut him off with a raised hand.
"No," Logos admitted after a pause, as if that were entirely beside the point.
Lucy sighed and set him down, brushing imaginary dust from his tunic. "Then maybe let the men who do understand them worry about it."
He tilted his head slightly, as if considering her suggestion, but his gaze never left the engineers. "They've wired the left knee joint wrong," he said suddenly.
Lucy gave him a sidelong look. "And you can tell that how?"
"The runes are pulsing out of sequence," Logos replied simply, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
One of the engineers cursed as the harness emitted a sudden grinding noise. Tools were fetched, murmured orders passed. Logos' expression did not change, but there was a faint glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes.
Lucy decided, not for the first time, that there were things about this boy she was better off not trying to untangle. "Come on," she said, steering him toward the shade of the viewing gallery. "We'll watch for a bit, then you're going outside the walls to see the market."
"I prefer the library," Logos said.
"And I prefer you not turning into a pale little ghost who's never seen the sun," Lucy countered. "So we're compromising — which means you're losing."
A faint breeze carried the scent of hot metal and sweat as they settled onto the low bench beneath the gallery. Logos sat perfectly still, black eyes following the movements of the Armatus and its handlers. Around them, the clang of steel and the rhythmic stomp of boots filled the yard, but the boy seemed to be listening for something else — some hidden pattern beneath the noise.
Lucy didn't notice, but his fingers, resting on the bench, tapped a slow, deliberate rhythm — the same rhythm as the pulse of the frame's conduit lines.