Benn led the way through the streets of Vagren and Raya tried to keep up. Their path was crowded with barrel-laden wagons, fruit selections with slight sides of tabletop, guards with brass shirts and metal-tipped canes, and permeated with the whispering air of distant lute chords, honey-scent and warm wholegrain bread. Gone were the slavers that had once chased her; in Vagren, anyone breaking the law was fair game for slavers, hence the Silver Guild and others hunting the streets after curfew. Raya shrugged away the memory. She strode through a cloud of white baking smoke, and watched Benn’s short brown hair swaying as he walked. He looked back and smiled. “It’s up ahead,” he piped.
The Archive of Vagren was a four storey building, shaped like a large cube. The exterior of it reflected each floor, with ornate columns made of marble supporting each and lion gargoyles at the top of each. A tall wooden fence, overgrown with green and brown vines, kept the property private from the streets. As they neared, Raya got a glance down the long block it occupied. There was more than a garden on the Archive’s property; behind the building a small forest loomed over the old wooden fence.
Benn saw where she looked. “They have groves for reading, in case you want to see some sunlight on your pages.”
“Have you been here before?” Raya asked. Dondar has excused himself from their adventure to the library, and spent the day at Vagabond’s Rest, Benn’s inn.
Benn grinned. “Many times. I don’t really have a lot of expenses, so I put a lot of what Master Kama pays me toward Archive admission. Some days I come here and read all day.”
They climbed the steps to the entranceway, where two armoured guards let them enter without a word. A desk and chain fence blocked the way through the antechamber, but Benn handed them a few coins for a day’s entry and the secretary let them enter. A large tapestry hung against the opposing wall, depicting wars to the left side, and a farmer’s field to the right, with the Orrish meteor descending upon them both from above.
Raya walked in quiet reverence through the tall door into the first library room. The bookshelves were two-storeys tall, and platforms decorated with stairs and wheels sat in each corner. One librarian stood on a step halfway up a nearby shelf, and Benn walked up to him casually. “Master Omanah,” her friend said. “We’re looking for some names. Nalisa Orr and Axar.”
“Oh, Mistress Nalisa!” the old bearded fellow exclaimed. He leaned over the railing of his little staircase and folded his hands. “I have not seen her in many days, sadly. Since last year, I suppose. Time gets away from me in these dusty shelves.”
“You know her?” Raya asked, confused.
“Not personally. She’s a collector, and a incredible one at that. She has purchased many books from the Archive at great expense, and has sold us a few too,” archivist Omanah said.
Benn and Raya looked at each other. “What books?” Raya asked.
Omanah shrugged. “I can collect a few if you’d like. Where’d you hear her name?” He finished his shelving work and then clambered down to them. He was a short man, Raya realized; he had looked tall up above them. Benn helped him push the stair cart away, to the corner where it fit between shelves like a wedge of pie.
“What are you thinking?” Benn asked.
Raya shrugged. The quiet library felt like a different world than the fiery wastes around Mount Lukar. “We don’t even know for sure that the names and that strange… alter have anything to do with what Hemsten told us to learn. But, maybe, these books will shed light on that? We’ll at least know something about this Nalisa Orr character.”
Benn nodded. “Let’s get a table.”
There were different rooms in the Archive building, each seemingly cordoned by subject. Every third room was designated a Study Partition, where small wooden tables allowed people privacy when reading. Benn pulled a table over so that Raya and he could wait at the same one. There were three others in there, two old men seated at adjacent tables, and a middle-aged business woman with a large stack of registry books. Benn and she waited in silence, but he smiled when their eyes met in passing. Raya kept examining the artwork on the walls—in this room, mostly portraits of people she didn’t know and hadn’t heard of. The largest was labelled “Zora Ai Nalamar”; Raya knew the first word was another name for King, but she had never heard of the bearded man depicted there.
At last Master Omanah returned with an armload of books. “Be delicate with these. They are priceless artifacts.” He left the two friends to study and returned to the first room.
“They’re all histories,” Benn said, looking them over. Each book he glanced at, he passed to her: “The Diandoran Wars” first, then “Mistress Horva’s Study of Raderan Prehistory”, “The Dawn of Race”, and “Before the Orrish Volume 2”.
“This tells us little,” Raya said. “Nalisa Orr studied history. Or even just collects it. She may not even know anything about it.”
Benn nodded. “We learned she’s real though, and that she’s been in Vagren a few times,” he said, positively. “Let’s go speak with Omanah again.”
The archivist didn’t know anything about the other name, Axar. On a whim, Benn asked if Nalisa Orr was a local in Vagren or not. Omanah pursed his lips. “I shouldn’t discuss the privacy of business partners, but, Benn, you seem harmless. I don’t know if she’s still here, because I haven’t seen her in so long—but! I know Mistress Nalisa did have a house in the city. I’ll jot down its address and you two can ask her about her collection if you so desire.”
They wished him a good day and then discussed their next move in front of the Archive’s exterior steps. It was misfortunate that Nalisa Orr hadn’t returned to the Archive in more than half a year, and even more-so that the archivists had no explanation why. The name Axar held no weight as an author, a subject, or any other known persona.
“Let’s go to the address then,” Raya decided.
Benn blinked. “What will we say if they ask?” he said, as they started walking. The address wasn’t far—the Archives were already in the wealthy district.
“We’re lost, we’re looking for a different address,” she said. “They probably moved, like Omanah said.”
It took them about half an hour to find the place, but there was plenty of sunlight left. The curfew wasn’t approaching yet. The property once or currently owned by Nalisa Orr was not a lavish mansion like some they had passed, but it was a large, three-storey house built out of fine timber and granite supports. The front panelling was painted a dark blue, and proper gravelly shingles covered the steeple roof. There was a small juniper tree in the front yard, behind a small wooden fence.
“What are you doing?” Raya asked, when Benn opened the small hinged gate and walked up the path toward the front door.
“Asking for direction,” Benn said, with a wink. Raya hurriedly caught up and kept close to her friend. They reached the huge wooden door. She reached for the door knocker, an ornate arrowhead made of bronze and red rock. Before she touched it, Benn snatched her hand now. “Let’s just listen and look, first,” he said.
Raya nodded. “I’m quieter,” she told him, and snuck over to the nearby window. She glanced in slowly, and froze.
A woman sat in an armchair in there, with short brown hair pulled back from her face. She was speaking to someone Raya couldn’t see, blocked by a curtain of beads. Glass blocked the window, so the beads seemed out of place—as did the dark purple lines drawn beneath the woman’s eyes. It was Lotha, in this unknown house. She didn’t see Raya; she was busily engaged in a conversation with whomever else was there. A bearded man entered the room, and sat down to Lotha’s left. Raya didn’t recognize him, and backed away from the window before she was spotted, breath held.