Theron arrived at the estate before dawn.
He wasn't trying to make an impression. He just couldn't sleep. His mind had been racing all night, turning over plans and questions, and by the time the first grey light appeared in the sky he was already dressed and walking through the streets.
The guard at the gate barely glanced at him. "Library assistant?"
"Yes."
"Up the stairs. Left at the top. Don't touch anything you weren't told to touch."
Theron nodded and went inside.
The library was on the second floor of a stone tower at the back of the estate. It was smaller than he'd imagined. Not the grand hall full of thousands of scrolls that he'd pictured in his head. Just a single room, maybe twenty paces long and ten wide, with shelves lining every wall from floor to ceiling.
But it was full. Packed. Scrolls and codices and clay tablets crammed into every available space, some stacked on top of each other, some lying on the floor in messy piles. It smelled like old parchment and dust and lamp oil.
Philippos was already there, sitting at a cluttered desk near the far wall, reading something by lamplight. He didn't look up when Theron walked in.
"You're late," he said.
Theron glanced at the window. No sunlight yet. "It's before dawn."
"Exactly. I've been here an hour. Keep up."
Theron decided not to argue.
Philippos spent the next hour explaining the job. It was simpler than Theron expected, but there was a lot of it.
The collection was a mess. Scrolls had been filed randomly over decades. Some were duplicates. Some were damaged. Some were in languages Philippos couldn't read. The old librarian — the one before Philippos — had apparently organized everything by color rather than subject, which explained why a treatise on naval warfare was sitting next to a collection of love poems.
Theron's job was to fix it.
"Catalog everything," Philippos said, gesturing at the shelves. "Read each text. Summarize it in one sentence. Label it. File it properly. When you find something interesting, tell me. When you find something damaged, set it aside. When you find something you don't understand, ask."
"And the locked cabinet?" Theron asked, nodding toward a heavy wooden chest in the corner, sealed with an iron lock.
Philippos' expression didn't change. "Family magical texts. Off limits. Don't look at it. Don't touch it. Don't think about it."
"Understood."
"Good. Start with that stack." Philippos pointed to a pile of scrolls on the floor near the door. "Work your way through. One at a time."
Theron started working.
The first scroll was a property boundary dispute from fifteen years ago. Boring. He read it, wrote a one-line summary, and filed it under Property Records.
The second was a genealogy. Also boring, but slightly more useful — it listed the Aristophon family tree going back six generations, with notes about which members had magical abilities. Theron filed it but made a mental note to come back to it later.
The third was a poem about spring. He filed it and tried not to yawn.
He worked steadily for two hours, reading and cataloging, building a rhythm. It was mindless work, mostly. But that was fine. His hands were busy, and his eyes kept drifting to the window.
The window overlooked the training yard.
Theron had noticed it on his first pass through the room. A wide window, open to let in light and air, positioned perfectly to see the flat stone area where the nobles practiced magic every morning.
He hadn't planned it. He hadn't asked for his desk to be near it. Philippos had simply pointed him to the pile of scrolls closest to that side of the room, and that was where he'd set up.
Lucky.
Around mid-morning, movement in the yard caught his eye.
A young man had walked out onto the practice stone. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Dark hair, lean build, a nervous energy about him. He carried a wooden stick in one hand — a practice tool, Theron realized, for drawing circles in the sand without getting his hands dirty.
This was Alexios. Theron had seen him at the duel, standing in the crowd behind his father. He was one of Lord Aristophon's younger sons.
Alexios set the stick down, rolled his shoulders, and began to draw.
Theron watched.
The circle appeared in the sand, smooth and even. Alexios drew it in one continuous motion, the stick barely lifting. Then he added the triangle inside it — three lines, three points on the circle's edge.
Theron's eyes narrowed. He grabbed a scrap of parchment and his charcoal, keeping both hidden below the edge of the desk.
The ratio looked right. 1.618. The same as Kyros.
Alexios positioned his hands on the circle's edge. Theron estimated the angle between them. About 144 degrees. Same as Kyros again.
Then Alexios breathed in. A deep breath — Theron could see his chest expand even from up here. He held it for a moment. Then he spoke the incantation, and a small flame appeared above the circle's center.
It lasted about five seconds. Then it vanished.
Alexios tried again. Same result. Five seconds of flame.
On the third attempt, someone called to him from across the yard. Alexios turned his head to look, lost his focus mid-cast, and nothing happened. No flame at all.
Theron wrote it down quickly.
Alexios — fire magic. Ratio 1.618 (confirmed). Hand position ~144°. Breathing: deep inhale before cast. Flame duration: ~5 seconds. Failed when distracted.
He underlined the last part.
Focus matters. Distraction = failure.
Lunch was served in a small courtyard behind the kitchens, where the servants ate. Theron sat alone at first, picking at his bread and cheese — better food than he ate at home, at least — and watching the other workers come and go.
Most of them ignored him. New servant. Not worth talking to yet.
One didn't.
"You're the library guy, right?"
Theron looked up. A young man about his age was sitting down across from him with a wooden bowl of stew. He had an easy grin and dirt under his fingernails. Garden worker.
"I'm Kallias," he said, not waiting for an answer to his first question. "I do the hedges and the flower beds. Exciting stuff."
"Theron."
"I know. Everyone knows. You beat out thirty-six other people for that job. The servants have been talking about it all morning."
Theron hadn't expected that. "Talking about what, exactly?"
"About how a metic beat a bunch of citizens for the position. Some of them aren't happy about it." Kallias shrugged like he didn't care. "Personally, I think it's hilarious."
They ate in silence for a moment.
"So what's the library like?" Kallias asked. "Full of ancient secrets and hidden treasures?"
"Full of dust and property records."
Kallias laughed. "That's what I figured."
He kept talking — easy, relaxed conversation about nothing important. The weather. The food. The nobles and their ridiculous habits. Theron found himself listening, actually listening, instead of just waiting for the other person to stop talking.
Kallias was sharp. Not in an obvious way, but in the small comments he made. A joke here that was actually an observation. A casual remark that showed he'd been paying attention to things most people missed.
Theron liked him immediately.
When lunch ended, Theron went back to the library and picked up where he'd left off. He cataloged scrolls for the rest of the afternoon, stealing glances at the training yard whenever he could.
Alexios practiced three more times that day. Each session, Theron watched and wrote down everything he could see.
By the time he left the estate that evening, he had filled half a page with notes.
And he had a new question — one that hadn't occurred to him before.
Everyone I've watched uses the same ratio. The same hand position. The same words. Is it really "bloodline magic"? Or is it just the same technique, taught to every noble child the same way?
He walked home through the darkening streets, already planning what to look for tomorrow.
End of Chapter Five