Caelt was the name he’d gone by while he lived in Ammar. The shortened version of Cimaon’s shrine-name sounded like their word for hawk. Much better than “Kaltevus,” the name that sounded like rock rolling down a hill. He got that name from his birth month -- and shared it with any other person born the same month in Nymaut.

Sometimes Ciamon still thought of himself as Caelt. He’d wake up in his bunk thinking it was time to feed the horses and hit his head on the platform of the bed above his before remembering where he was. No longer a groom in the house of Gruffydd the Silver Hoarder, but a Listener of the Great Dome set to the menial task of translation in its Library of the Sages.

Every day after salus, he crossed the temple's sweet-smelling desert paths to reach the round-roofed tower where mages offered prayers of the mind through study. With the sun high over the glass, the shadows of the Great Dome’s buildings each became the hand of a clock. The narrowing midday shadows counted out the time it took him to walk from salus to library.

Ciamon found it impossible to walk anywhere inside the Great Dome and not think to himself, How long? How long would they keep him here? How long would Beatrice’s silence last? His watch hung from his neck like a noose, time swinging against him with every step.

The cool, dark silence of the library soothed him somewhat. The smell of books and sealing wax filled him with a sense of purpose. Ciamon scaled the marble steps up to the second floor where the Sages kept the Ammarish wing and found himself a table for the day’s work. He prepared himself for mind-prayer as he would for salus -- folding his palla for a bench cushion, and unhooking his crescent to set aside. The watch sat on the tabletop beside the stack of books he chose, watching him like an eye.

The archmage leading prayers of the mind was Archmage Joachim Redbeard. At the advanced age of eighty-eight, he set a slower pace than Diamondhands. He was not apt to be at the Library of Sages until after lunch. That gave Ciamon enough time to produce at least six pages of notes for the archmage to consider. If he won Redbeard’s nod of approval, he could leave the library early and have a rare bit of time for himself.

Ciamon peeled open the tome the archmage had set for him to translate. The Annals of Life and Harmony was one of the first written works produced by Ammar’s prophets during the Age of Chaos. The book made him anxious when Redbeard first assigned it to him. For such an early work, it had an intimidating thickness like a dictionary or a reference guide. Something to consult or cite, not read or enjoy.

The words flowed over the page like river streams. Ciamon loved everything about Ammar’s language, both written and spoken. The rounded edges of its vowel sounds told his tongue what shape to take when speaking and important phrases always included shape or color. It was a language you could sing every word of -- even the cusses and the slurs.

I wonder if Bea’s read this one.

Ciamon couldn’t look at a book and not think of Beatrrice. He’d brought books to Ammar’s queen-to-be nearly every day she’d spent cooped up in Gryffudd’s guesthouse with her broken ankle. That was how he discovered Sanchia’s glittering heiress had a sharp mind and quick tongue. She’d have made short work of the Annals if he’d given it to her.

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Ciamon checked the time on his watch. Like a merchant plotting a route across a map, he counted out the hours until noon and planned for how many pages he could get through. He paged to where he’d left off the day before and dove into the Ammarish text as if he were Caelt the groom rising from his bed to tend the horses with a fresh mind and a whole life hidden away somewhere else.

“A Diverse Means of Birth Arriving At Life.” Ciamon read the section title twice, silently testing the shape of the words in his mouth. The short, dry essay detailed the exploits of Ammarish priests at Java seeking to improve birth rates among noblewomen. In three hundred words, the author made convincing arguments for the use of the hot springs as a means of delivery and an attraction for wealthy nobles. A five-word endnote undercut it all by tallying the number of drownings at the shrine.

Ciamon parsed each sentence into Nymauti, considering the whole meaning of the essay before he committed ink to page. The words of the Blessed weren’t lightly written. He wrote down an accurate, equally dry copy of the words in his own language, each line and dot made with careful precision.

The next essay ran longer, a meditation on whether the drowned joined God in the Heavens or returned to Ny in the Rock. Here, the author quoted Nymaut’s sacred texts and mismatched the terms Mat and God. Ammar rejected the belief that they were one and the same being, preferring to keep the roles of son and father separate. Added a whole layer of filth to the insult fuck your mother.

Ciamon added this context as a margin note beside the tight scrawl of translated words. He found himself glancing at his watch.

An hour. I’ve been sitting here an hour.

He twirled the silver dip-pen between his fingers. Again, his mind went to Beatrice and how she’d teased his accent at pronouncing the word. He’d nearly given himself away trying to test how well she could say common words in Boccean.

Why did I try so hard to impress her? Ciamon wondered. He’d never actually planned to seduce her…

Or had he?

As he pored over the Annals, his mind wandered back to the royal gardens. Free of the dream-death, Ciamon could let himself remember what it felt like to see a spark of danger in her eyes. Beatrice surprised him that day when she’d seized his hand and placed it on her breast. Until that moment, he had thought of her as only a child. Just like a novice mage fresh up the Sacred Steps. He’d conveniently forgotten that he’d been the same age as her when he first left the Dome.

Six years. That was all the time that separated their birthdates. If she’d been born a shrine-child like him, her name would’ve been Lohikaarme, the dragon.

Ciamon set the pen down and lifted his watch. An hour and five minutes. Five minutes since he’d last looked! The little hands on the dials seemed to mock him with stillness, stuck pointing at the same hour while the gears inside turned. He could feel every tick as he returned to the swirl of Ammarish words on the page with his watch clutched in his hand.

Where had he left off?

Right—Birth. Death. God. The things all sages seemed to write about whether it was poems or reference books. Ciamon shifted on the hard bench, feeling the twinge in his back return now that the languor of salus had worn off. He struggled to hold onto the words on the page, like a drowning man clinging to a rock in a river.

No easy thing to drown in a desert, Diamondhands had said.

“Fuck your mother,” Ciamon muttered under his breath. The punishment of the archmages confounded him.