My first morning free, Elénna, the physician, and I sit at the table downstairs, eating sweet porridge and bitter tea. Elénna's eyes are bright and alert despite the long night, but I imagine she'll be headed to bed after this.

"Pass the tea, would you, m'dear?" Illesiarr asks.

I look up from my food to find him staring at me, not Elénna. "Oh. Of course." I hand over the pot from its place in front of me, wondering that he could have already finished his first cup. I'm doing my best not to make a face when I swallow.

"Did you sleep well last night?" He smiles softly, his white, cloudy hair bobbing as he pours his tea.

"Well enough. Thank you."

He and Elénna were down here before I was, and I wonder if she told him about last night. If so, he doesn't mention it. "Good, good."

The two of them make small talk, keeping up with patients' statuses and how many supplies they have left. As the short meal wraps up, Elénna asks if he needs anything else, and he shakes his head. "Just for you to get some rest, m'dear."

Illesiarr pushes to his feet as she heads upstairs, and I help him clear. We place the dishes in a basin set into the counter, and Illesiarr pricks his finger on a small statue of a woman. A droplet of blood slides down her upreaching hand, and water rushes in from openings near the top of the basin. It stops when half-full, but no door covers the holes, no pump shuts off.

"Convenient thing, isn't it?" Illesiarr smiles at me. "They don't have water like this in most of N'veauvia. The poorer districts have to gather theirs from the city wells."

I avoid his gaze as I scrub our bowls, wondering what would make him tell me something like that.

His voice drops. "The prince told me about your situation, Maed Riveaux. Your secret is safe."

I relax, understanding. "Thank you."

He waves it away.

"Sir?"

Moving to his mortar and pestle, he leaves me to the dishes. "Illesiarr is just fine, m'dear. I'm not so formal as the rest of the castle."

"Illesiarr, then." I dry a dish with a nearby towel. "Is there anywhere here I could study?"

"A scholar, then, are you?"

"I used to be. But I meant more along the lines of magic and..." Morineaux, culture, history. I need grounded in this world, and I don't think just watching is going to give me the kind of crash course I'm looking for.

"There are plenty of books to study in the library."

My eyes light up. If their library is half as grand as their Auditorium Arbitrate, it's sure to be breathtaking. "Where is it?"

He gives me directions, and after finishing the dishes, I head that way. Winding the empty hallways, I can't help but wonder if the castle is always like this or if this is another result of the war raging outside its doors. It's strange, my footsteps falling hollow in something so grand and abandoned. It reminds me eerily of my last night in Karsix, sneaking alone through the deathly hushed city. The only real noises here are me and the whispering gems in the walls.

I reach the library and pass through its large, propped-open door. The magic's whispering is louder here, a layered sound coming from multiple directions. Rows and rows of books fill the main floor, and huge glass windows make up the outside walls. The extensive collection reminds me of the library at my university in Erreliah. I used to spend hours there studying or just wandering the shelves. I weave through these now, fingers passing over books' spines. Some of these look so much older than any I've seen in the Valleys.

However, I steer away from those, instead looking for more recent histories and books of etiquette. After collecting a few hopeful prospects and a single book entitled The Principal Fundamentals of Magic, I haul them to an empty table and throw myself into studying, starting with etiquette. I don't plan on becoming a master by any means, but I'd rather not offend anyone, or worse, reveal my complete ignorance.

Several hours later, my head swims with information: the difference in station between a maedimoielle, a maedame, and a Lady; various levels of genuflection depending on station and gender; and the complete condescension of women toward men. I already knew Morineaux was ruled by a woman, which is no great shock to me. The Errelian Council is always made up of a mix, and women are elected just as often to Head Presider as men. But taking alone the tone of these two etiquette books, I'm almost shocked that Aster and his brother have a ruling place at all, or even that Illesiarr is the royal physician. They don't even use the same word for a male ruler of a different country as they do their own—instead, it's all 'kadreaux,' a derogative derived from Kadran's patriarchy.

Everything here is woman-centered. In polite conversation, a man must always talk less than a woman. When nobility greet, the female's hand always goes on top, no matter how high-ranking the male is she's greeting. The only exception is if she wants to be extra polite; then she may offer her hand palm-up and let him have the top position. At tea, the highest-ranking person takes the head of the table and is served first—unless the person at the head is a man, in which case he's served second.

With all these little, polite slights, I can't help but wonder what larger, uglier slights might hide in their legal system.

After simple bread and cheese at Illesiarr's for lunch, I come back to turn my attention to history. Excitement grips me when I find a rough timeline of Morineaux's past, laid out across two pages. Things like The Coronation of Jacqueline, The Construction of the Early Castle, and The Binding of Astraeus the Shadesnare crowd together within the first fifty years. Strung along after that are various coronations and deaths of queens, names of battles, and country achievements and tragedies, all listed in years since the ascension of that first queen. The castle built onto, walls of the city constructed, and the capital moved from here to Laq'duví and back again. Nine hundred years of history rest in my hands, not accounting for the age of the book itself.

The significance of it makes me pale. I want to believe that the Morineause must not know how to count, must have a calendar where the years register wrong, but their facts lay plain before me. In the High Valleys, the year is 615 A.G.C., counted after the Grand Charter that united all our city-states. There should be absolutely no way Morineaux—whose people still light torches and whose water runs only by magic—can be older than my society.

Yet it is. By over three-hundred years.

Sean and I thought that the Avadelians broke off from our people during some disaster which left no record of the split. For the first time, I'm forced to wonder if perhaps it was the other way around.

Bothered by this mystery, I abandon the books I already found for older histories and books of legends. I skim them, looking for the earliest accounts of countries, searching for any mention of my people in the mountains. All I find are myths.

Supposedly Avadel was once full of warring tribal peoples until a magical Jacqueline and other beings like her fell from the sky. They kept their magic from all the humans except one man named Astraeus, who caught their eye when he united the human tribes. They made him like one of them. He returned their gift with betrayal, trying to kill Jacqueline, who transformed into the staglike creature from the forest—a r'muer—to escape him. A battle ensued at a massive silver tree, with some of the survivors following Astraeus and some following Jacqueline. The tribe that called itself Morineaux followed Jacqueline and went south.

The tribe that called itself Kadran followed Astraeus and went north.

A thousand questions buzz in my head as I try to sort truth from legend, but I'm not even sure where to start. As for my own people, no stories stick out for their possible origin. If the Valleyans really did split off from Avadel and not the other way around, my best guess is some forgotten tribe wandered off.

But even if I could find answers here, truth is often more complicated than what is printed on the page.

I'm still in the library as darkness falls. The sun's rays disappear through the great windows, and the soft light of glow crystals takes their place. The bookshelves themselves are embedded with the tiny lights, making it seem as though I've been transported to a fairy land. Still with plenty of light to read by, I continue to thumb through the thin book of legends I found. The one about Jacqueline and Astraeus was in here, as well as a handful of other fairy tales. There's something intriguing about reading the make-believe of another country, the stories every child is supposed to know.

One tale is a ghost story about a dead woman's soul wandering through the haunted forests of Antium. She's searching for her stillborn daughter. Allazeyh, eternal guardian of the forest, tells the woman her child 'crossed the river.' But the woman is too afraid to cross, so she keeps wandering through the forest until she goes mad listening to the screams of the dead.

In another, a girl with wild magic is born to a magician and her husband. After the child's magic burns down their house and kills her husband, the magician fears for both her and her daughter's life. To save them, she puts the girl in an enchanted slumber, and for the rest of her life, the girl sleeps, flames of wild magic dancing in the air above her head.

Unsettled, I return the book to its shelf. I'm not sure I'm too fond of Morineause fairy tales. When I come back, The Principal Fundamentals of Magic still lies on the table, and I realize it's the only subject I haven't surveyed yet. My stomach growls, though, and I glance around for a librarian. Not finding one, I scoop the book up and leave. I can bring it back tomorrow, before I report for work.

After dinner, I curl up on my bed with a candle and read. Even just trying to grasp the basics, it's slow-going. I've always considered myself a good study, but I have the wrong foundation for this. Whereas science is conjecture and evidence, this book seems to be opinions and guesses as to how magic works, more commentary and philosophy than hard fact. On top of that, not all the words translate, so I'm left with certain phrases swimming before my eyes. If I focus hard on them, they transform into my alphabet—perhaps a phonetic translation?—but otherwise, foreign characters dance on the page. I encountered this already, but with the magic book, it's as though I need a whole new language to truly understand what's going on.

So far, I've managed to determine that spells end when the caster ends them or when whatever amount of energy the caster originally put into them runs out. Sometimes casters store spells into an artefact to save it for later or make it last longer. It's this stored-magic that Aster says I'm hearing. Materials help casters focus their magic; better materials produce better results.

With that frustratingly basic understanding and an impending headache from the low light, I blow out my candle and set the book aside.

"Goodnight," I whisper into the darkness.

Only the faint whisper-song of my bracelet responds, and for a moment, I'm filled with regret. Not so long ago, I would have been traveling, and an echoed "Night, Riveirre" would have answered me.

I pull my blankets tighter and tap off my bracelet to dim its glow. After a long day spent studying, I expect to immediately crash. Instead, I find myself wondering how Sean used to keep up his sleep-deprivation-in-the-name-of-knowledge. He was always the last person out of the lab; sometimes I wondered if he ever left or if he just made a home out of his desk. Even while we traveled out of the High Valleys, as I would drop into a bone-weary sleep, often, he'd be clacking away on his presswrite. Was it the thrill, the challenge, that sustained him, or was he some super-human who had moved past the need for sleep?

As I drift into semi-consciousness, I imagine asking him. Imaginary-Sean quirks an eyebrow, that smug, teasing smile on his lips. "So you finally admit I'm superior to you?" Or maybe he'd scowl, frustrated by my irrationality. "It's learned, Riveirre." But even in my hazy thoughts, I know neither are quite correct. I never could guess exactly what he would say; he always surprised me. That bittersweet note of regret rings inside me again. I wish I could see him, wish I could ask him, wish it was so easy as to just open my eyes and him be there.

Somewhere between the reminiscing and the wishing, I drift to sleep and find him working, unsurprisingly, at his presswrite. In the dream, I look down on him in a tiny room that barely has space for his backpack and a mattress. It reminds me of a little topside hut. His collapsible lantern casts soft lines on his stern, concentrated face. When we were traveling, I would just listen to him work. The sound always lulled me into a deeper sleep and drew my mind to a different room, one with a roaring fire and my father typing on his keys, making me feel safe and warm and loved.

But tonight, dream-me is curious and bold and not content simply to stay quiet. Tonight, I speak. "Are you superhuman?"

Sean's fingers freeze, and I tuck that away as an inconsistency. Sean never stops typing right away, always finishes his line, his word, his something. Has to show he's not really as interested in you as you think he should be.

But tonight, Sean's fingers freeze, and he looks around. "Leavi?"

"Who else?" I admonish. "But that's really not an answer to my question."

He thrusts aside his presswrite and begins searching the room, as though he'll find my answer hidden beneath the corner of his blanket.

"For a genius, you're not very good at answering questions, Sean."

"Blazes, Leavi, where are you?" His head shakes, and he reminds me of my old windup doll, shaking its head, insistent, no, no, no... until its gears ran out of go. He sinks back onto his mattress. "I'm losing it. Finally, really, actually losing it."

"Losing what?" I'm trying to ask him gently, because even though it's my question he won't answer—he's really not being very helpful here—he does seem to be distressed, and I hate for anyone to be distressed, for him to be distressed. I try to ask him gently.

His hand covers his face, slides down, drops. "Stupid, stupid." More loudly, "You know, I really thought that if I was going to start hearing voices, it would at least not be someone I knew. Better than Jacin, though. He was a jerk. At least Leavi's nice." He rises again, never still for too long, always in motion—never resting, never sleeping. Superhuman. "But, really, if I'm going to hear voices, then I think talking to myself now is a step too far. That's a three-way conversation that doesn't exist." He laughs, and it hurts my heart; it's like a songbird jeering at its own song.

I didn't want to make him jeer. I sigh, as disappointed as I was on mornings Dad had promised hotcakes for breakfast and ended up having to leave for work early. He isn't going to answer me, and I can't—won't, don't want to—make him. "All I really wanted to know was what you were going to say. But you're forever away, and I let you leave. I don't get to know."

A strange expression crosses his face, something like leaving your favorite novel where Mom has found it and then feeling bad for the pages as they blacken and burn. "Leavi..." He leans against the wall, and then his mouth is moving but there is no sound, a genius talking but no one listening, a Sean there but disappearing, a dream fading but the dreamer begging it not to go.

It doesn't matter. Dreams rely on no one's will.