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The sun shone brightly on a marble tile.
"Rise," it said.
—A person
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Kirsya's feather duster swept over the leather-bound books, raising small dust clouds that caught the morning light. She kept her back to the canopied bed. Behind her, the prince's breathing was slow and even. Kalos was still asleep. She reached up to straighten the curtains draped over the bookshelves.
A floorboard creaked near the bed. The breathing changed—a quick inhale, then the rustle of sheets. Kirsya kept her back turned, her duster kept moving along the shelves, but she listened.
Kalos pushed himself up, wincing. He glanced at his musket rifle propped against the bedpost, his shoulders slightly stiff and sore from yesterday's shooting practice. He swung his feet onto the rug, a red and crimson Jeleuan master craft, walked to the window.
The light shifted as he pulled back the heavy drape. He stood there a moment, watching Kirsya's back, her steady, unhurried movements. Then he looked out to the courtyard.
The fortress was waking up. Hammer clanging from the forge, someone shouting in the stables, waves hitting the cliffs below. Everyone was already busy, already loud. Kirsya felt him there, a silent shape at the edge of her senses, staring out at a world that wouldn't leave him alone.
Kalos pressed his palm flat against the cold glass. For a moment, he envied the dust. "Does it ever end, Kirsya?" His voice was rough. He didn't turn around. "The dust, I mean. It just comes back, doesn't it? No matter what you do." He watched a cart rumble across the stones. "Anyway. Good morning."
"Good morning, Your Esteemed." She straightened, her emerald eyes catching light from the window, reflecting the prince's form beside it. "Just like the sea, it returns because it must. The air moves. The world stirs. The dust settles."
She walked to the food cart near his study table, where a highly ornate, silver coffee pot sat ready.
"ղᵻꬺ'դ կթτ (Ngarusa hallat)," she muttered. The brazier beneath it flared.
"I'll bring the arnica with your coffee," she said, glancing back. "Takes the ache off without fogging your head."
When the pot boiled, she filled the porcelain cup and handed it to him.
"Efficient as always." He took a sip. The bitterness sharpened everything. "Though it seems your dedication extends beyond dust and leather." he nodded at his bruise.
He set the cup down carefully, the clink echoing within the high-ceilinged room.
"Tell Lyrra she's to polish the ceremonial breastplates this morning. The ones in the lower armory. That endless shine she craves can keep her busy."
Her fingers paused on the silver pot. Lyrra. The girl whose laugh filled the kitchen but vanished the moment Kalos walked in. Kirsya remembered finding her in the tapestry gallery once, alone, touching the embroidered thread of some dead queen's coronation, her blue eyes bright.
"She'll be told," she said.
Kalos nodded, already looking back at the sea. He pressed his thumb into his shoulder, testing the soreness.
Kirsya walked to the door. Pulled it open.
Lyrra stood there, one hand raised to knock. She held a small bundle of lavender tied with twine. Her blonde hair, still damp, was braided tight. Her blue eyes went wide—past Kirsya, to the figure at the window, then back. The lavender smelled sharp and clean between them.
Lyrra opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
Kirsya looked at her.
"His Esteemed has a task for you," she said quietly. "The ceremonial breastplates in the lower armory need your attention."
A breeze from the hallway stirred Lyrra's hair. She swallowed, nodded once, stepped aside. Kirsya walked past her.
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Light fell through arched windows, gleaming on marble floor tiles worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. She walked the center of the corridor, her shadow stretching and trailing her with each golden sunbeam she crossed. The walls on one side watched her—generations of heads from the noble house of Niadir, painted in oil, acrylic, and gilt. The glass panes caught her reflection as she passed; their eyes tracked her progress with the same distant indifference they'd shown her since childhood. She knew their names, their reigns, the manner of their deaths. No one taught her. She simply absorbed them year after year, silent as dust settling on their ornate frames.
She passed the first head, stern, gray-bearded, his hand resting on a sword she recognized from the great hall. Then his son, softer of jaw and clutching a scroll instead of steel. Then the female magistrate who died in childbirth, her portrait finished posthumously, the painter's strokes uncertain around her cheeks.
Kirsya was walking the wrong direction.
The door to the second prince's chambers was closed. From within came the muffled, steady scrape of steel against a whetstone. She didn't slow. She knew the sound of a man preparing for a war that hadn't been declared. Further on, the corridor narrowed. The lord's study occupied the northern section, its old wooden door reinforced with iron bars.
At the far end, where the western wing curved toward the family's private chambers, the quiet shattered.
"—cannot simply run, Lady Potheine, the morning is for lessons—"
The voice belonged to Asteria, sharp with a frustration that never quite tipped into insubordination.
Kirsya knew that tone. She'd heard it directed at scullery maids who neglected the porcelain plates and junior servants who tracked mud across the manor halls. But here, it carried differently.
The silhouette rounding the corner was all tangled black hair and trailing white cotton. Potheine appeared not to run so much as to fall forward at great speed; her nightgown, stitched with small embroidered sparrows, had pulled loose at one shoulder. Her feet were remarkably clean. Her hair—Kirsya registered this in the half-second before impact—contained no ribbons.
The little princess collided with her thighs, rebounded slightly, and tilted her face upward with the unblinking composure of a cat that had meant to be exactly here all along.
"Kirsya," Potheine said, as though they'd arranged this meeting. Her brown eyes, very like her brother's but missing his philosophic stare, swept over the maid. "You smell like coffee and old books. Did you just leave brother's room? Is he awake? Sitting? Reading? En—"
Asteria arrived, her long bleached hair escaping its net, her emerald eyes carrying the particular exhaustion of those charged with herding small, determined creatures.
"The young lady woke early," said Asteria, now looking at Kirsya. They both nodded.
Potheine's small hand found Kirsya's apron and began pleating the fabric between her thumb and finger.
"The ones with the sea monsters. He said there was a new one, and he would show me the ink they used. He promised." Her little fingers kept their grip. "Is he still sad today?"
Kirsya looked down at the young princess, at the unribboned hair and her earnest face. A delightful, chaotic force of nature, Kalos had said once, usually in need of a hair ribbon.
"His Esteemed is awake," Kirsya said, "He has not yet begun his morning practice."
Potheine's face changed. She released Kirsya's skirt, spun on her bare heel, and was already several steps toward the direction Kirsya had come from before Asteria could exhale.
"Your Highness, shoes—"
But Potheine was already gone, her path a straight line toward the room Kirsya had left behind. Asteria followed, her long stride measured, resigned, almost fond. The echo of her footsteps faded. Kirsya stood alone among the painted kings. The silence resettled. She resumed her walk through the northern halls. The princess's question still drifted in the air.
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The northern courtyard opened before her like a basin catching the morning sun. The inner walls rose high enough to block the sea wind, but someone had allowed climbing Brezean flowers to claim the eastern face, their orange blooms spilling across the stone in great abundance.
Kirsya walked along the path of worn stone pavings, her shadow sliding across the grass beside. The stables occupied the entire western edge, their doors thrown open to the good weather. Hay dust floated in the light. A groom was mucking out a stall, his fork scraping rhythmically against stone. Beyond him, near the mounting block, a young man sat on an overturned bucket.
Thallos looked downwards as she approached. His hands kept moving, threading a new cord through the bridle's cheekpiece, then his head swung up to face her. Seventeen, all elbows and knees that hadn't quite caught up with the man he was becoming, with the kind of face that would one day be handsome but currently existed in a state of perpetual awkwardness. His hair needed cutting. It fell across his forehead in brown strands he kept pushing back with his wrist because his fingers were occupied.
"Oi Kirsya," he said. Not a question. A greeting, delivered with the easy familiarity of someone who'd learned years ago that she didn't require bowing or titles. "Ya up early. Or late, depending on when ya started." His eyes flicked to the bundle of lavender she still carried.
"For the horses? They prefer apples."
She looked at the lavender as though noticing it for the first time. "It's for nothing. Left behind."
Thallos grunted, returned to his work. The horse beside him, one of the white geldings reserved for the second prince's use, turned its large head and blew softly at Kirsya's sleeve. She didn't move. The horse lost interest and lipped at Thallos's pocket instead.
"Oh bucker'off," he said, without heat. "He's spoiled. All of Prince Dusak's horses are spoiled. Guy talks to 'em like they his counselors, and they got opinions about everything." He finished the knot, tugged it twice to test, then set the bridle across his knee. "Speaking of princes, the family's up then? Kalos moving yet, or still pretending sleep fixes things?" He asked. Thallos's father had driven supply wagons before a bad fall put him in the ground. His mother still worked in the laundry.
"The heir is awake," Kirsya said. "The second prince is sharpening steel."
Thallos's mouth twisted. "Dusak's always sharpening something. One of these days he's gonna grind that sword down to nothing." He squinted at the sky, then back at her. "The maids done with breakfast? Only I've got to bring these two up to the west pasture before the sun's high. If I miss the serving again, Vizna'll have my ears."
"They'll be done within the hour," she said. "The coffee has been served. The rest follows."
Thallos nodded, satisfied. He stood and stretched, gathering the repaired bridle. The white horse nudged him again, harder this time, and he stumbled a step.
"See?" He caught himself, pointed at the horse with the bridle. "Opinions. This one thinks—I'm late with his feed—hup" He looped the leather over his shoulder and began leading the horse toward the stable's interior.
Over his shoulder, he called back, "Tell Vizna I'll be there before the stew cools! She's already planning the harvest feast. Mother also keeps muttering about it being the best one since '51. I told her, ma', it's only '53, you've got time. She threw a cloth at me. Also the—"
He paused, seeming to reconsider whatever he'd been about to say. "Nevermind. Ya know what to tell'em."
"Wait," Kirsya handed him the lavenders. "Put this somewhere else."
With the bouquet in his hand, he disappeared into the shadows of the stable, the horse following. The other white gelding stood waiting at the hitching rail, one back hoof cocked, drowsing in the sun.
Kirsya stood in the courtyard then turned, crossed the palace's corner tower, and passed through the gate, out into the eastern triangle.
Erenela found her near the door to the Tifalya manor—the elf materialized from a side passage. Thirty-eight, she was young for her kind, her eyes the color of tropical vines. Her gray-streaked hair was flowing freely with the wind. She wore the same plain wool dress as the other maids, but somehow made it look like something else. Perhaps the absence of uncertainty.
"I was about to send for you," No greeting.
Kirsya nodded as though she'd expected exactly that.
"There's a problem in the Library."
"What is it?" Kirsya stopped in the doorway.
Erenela's fingers wrapped around her cup. She looked down at the tea, then back up at Kirsya.
"You're needed."
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They walked, never hurried. The stone pavers gave way to a narrow archway, which gave way to a covered walkway connecting the southern wing to the inner gatehouse and the outer bailey. The library, a stone, brick and mortar building, occupied the southern part of the outer bailey. Its high double door facing the southeast, giving a perpetual staring contest with the nearby outer wall of the star fortress on the other side of the path.
Darak, the brass nameplate read on the side of the doorframe with the emblem of the Ty'vanar Royal Family. Another plate—polished silver—below it reads 'Restored under the stewardship of Lord Waryad Niadir, 1847–1851'.
Both of them entered the library building and into the main corridor, the smell of dust kicked up in the air, ever present. Kirsya's eyes wandered to the east.
The books lay scattered across the floor in one area, like leaves after a storm. A whole section of shelving, the eastern wall, the section devoted to naval histories and coastal charts, had collapsed inward. Its contents spilled in a cascade of broken boards and tumbled leather. One of the reading tables had been pushed askew. A chair lay on its side. And in the center of it all, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor with a massive atlas open across her lap, sat Potheine.
Her bare feet were dusty now. Her nightgown had acquired a smudge of something dark across one sleeve. She looked up as the door opened, her brown eyes wide with an expression that mixed guilt with something that looked, improbably, like satisfaction.
"The shelf fell," she said. "I didn't push it. But I was here when it did, and now the books are everywhere." She paused, considering. "Some of them are very old. I found one with pictures of fish."
Erenela stood in the doorway, her eyes moving slowly over the scene. Taking inventory and assessing damage. Calculating the hours of work this would require.
"The tutor is at breakfast. Darak filed his inspection report last month. Noted nothing wrong." She looked at Kirsya. "The princess should not be here alone."
Potheine's face lifted slightly. "Eh? I'm not alone. I'm with the books!"
Kirsya looked at the scattered books, the collapsed shelving, then the small figure in the center of it all with her dust-smudged nightgown and her atlas of fish.
She paced to the nearest pile of books and began, very carefully, to pick them up.
"Young lady," she said, "show me which shelf you were trying to reach."
"Err, don't know." Potheine's gaze traveled the floor of scattered books. "All shuffled."
Kirsya's hands moved, lifting and sorting. Histories to the left. Navigation charts to the right. The fallen shelf she left untouched, that was a carpenter's work, not hers.
She straightened the stack of correspondence on the lord's desk to the left of the shelf. The top letter bore the royal seal and a date,
12th of Daganulan, 1853—Three days ago. Still unopened.
Potheine watched her from the floor, the massive atlas still open across her lap. One small finger traced the coastline of Suvuma, a neighboring island far away.
"The fish one has teeth," she offered. "Big ones. Bigger than my arm."
"Mm." Kirsya lifted a sheaf of loose charts. "Codex Marinus. Your great-great-grandfather commissioned it. The artist spent three years at sea, drawing what he saw."
Potheine's eyes widened. "He saw fish with teeth?"
"More. He saw many things." Kirsya placed the charts on the reading table. "Some of them he drew. Some of them he only wrote about. The sea doesn't hold still for pictures."
She nodded, solemn, and returned to her atlas.
"Kirsya?" she spoke again, a minute later.
"Yes."
"Were you ever small?"
Kirsya's hands paused over a fallen book.
Erenela, still positioned in the doorway, made a sound that might have been a cough, or something else entirely.
"Yes," Kirsya said. "I was small."
"I don't remember it. I don't remember being smaller." She frowned at the atlas. "Do you remember?"
Kirsya straightened a stack of maritime treaties. "Sometimes."
"Sometimes?"
The morning light fell through the windows. Kirsya watched the dust, before returning to her work.
"I like trouble. It's more interesting than lessons." Potheine said,
"Lessons are trouble of a different kind," Kirsya said. "They follow you longer."
Erenela moved at last, stepping into the room. She knelt beside a pile of fallen books and began to lift them, her movements mirroring Kirsya's.
"The carpenter will need to reset the brackets," she said. "The wall itself is sound. But someone climbed these shelves, or pulled on them, or—" Her eyes flicked to Potheine.
The princess's face assumed an expression of elaborate innocence. "I only looked. With my eyes!"
"Eyes… that required you to reach the top shelf?" Erenela said. Potheine's silence was answer enough.
Kirsya stepped to the collapsed shelving unit and examined the brackets that still clung to the wall. The screws had pulled free of the mortar. She ran her finger along the holes—the exposed stone inside was crumbled, dusty.
"This was weak," she said quietly. "Not her weight. Time."
Erenela joined her, peering at the damage. Her brow furrowed. "Again, inspected last month. This man's report noted nothing indeed. We have an issue here."
"Uh," Kirsya sighed. "He has been sleeping through afternoon prayers for three years. His inspections likely involve counting the books from his chair." She shrugged. "Comes with age, perhaps."
They shared a look, then Kirsya turned back to the floor, to the slow work of restoration.
Potheine had abandoned the atlas and was now crawling toward a fallen book bound in green leather, its spine cracked. She reached for it.
"Wait." Kirsya's voice stopped her. "Let me see that one first."
She crossed and knelt, lifting the book with careful hands. The binding was worse than cracked—it was splitting, the threads that held the signatures together visible through gaps in the spine. She opened it gently, turning pages until she found the title page.
Account of Northern Voyages, with Kingdoms of Uletha. By A. Simandak, Published in 742.
Kirsya closed it carefully. "This one needs another binder. It cannot be read until it's repaired."
Potheine's face fell. "But the pictures—"
"Will still be there when it returns. Books wait, that's what they do." Kirsya muttered.
Potheine sat back on her heels, her dusty nightgown pooling around her. "Do they get lonely?" she asked. "The books. When no one reads them for a long time?"
Erenela looked up from her pile.
Kirsya ran her thumb along the cracked spine of the volume in her hands. "I think," she said slowly, "they wait. Not hopefully, exactly. Just—patiently. They know their time comes eventually. Someone always needs what they contain."
"Even the fish one?"
"Especially the fish one. Someone two hundred years from now will want to know what swam in these waters before the ships came. And that book will tell them."
She stood and brushed off her nightgown,
"I'm going to read all of them," she announced. "Every single one! Even the boring ones about… taxes?"
Erenela chuckled and said dryly, "That would take several lifetimes."
"Then I'll live several lifetimes!" Potheine's chin lifted. "I'm a princess. I can do what I want."
Kirsya said nothing. She watched the child princess pick her way through the scattered books toward the door, then she was gone. Her bare feet pattered down the corridor, leaving behind scattered books and a trail of small dusty footprints.
Erenela rose, brushing off her knees. "That one will either save this family or destroy it."
"Perhaps both," Kirsya replied.
They worked in silence for a time, gathering and sorting. The morning light shifted across the floor, marking the hour.
Beyond the fortress walls, a bell began to toll—the temple's morning prayer cycle. Twenty years since the Vigilance Mandate. Twenty years of bells and watching, and the first warning that the lord would soon expect his midday reports.
Erenela glanced toward the eastern window, at the slim sunbeam entering through it. "You'll want to be elsewhere when he reads them. Sir Waryad has a unique form of patience."
Kirsya said nothing. She already knew which report would draw his attention first. Her gaze caught on a marble tile in the corner, blades of sun hitting its edge, light scattered all over the walls. "It has risen," she murmured.
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