Chapter One

The Court of Ivory was as sealed as a bank vault, as quiet as the grave, and as dusty as a desert. If it was abandoned, most people wouldn't even notice that something had changed. The same gates would remain closed, because all the scholars went by other passages - their eyes squinting from too long in the dark, and their hands curled by the repetitive motions of note-taking and page-turning. None of them took the main entrance, and so it might as well have been a segment of decorative wall. Typewriters hadn't been invented, and the thick walls muffled the dim sound of nibs scratching against rich, creamy paper, carving black rivers of ink into sweeping words and intricate diagrams. The booksellers wouldn't notice - the Court of Ivory had every book known by the city, all but the most secretive texts. They didn't purchase books - they commissioned them. They didn't hire printers - they built them. Even the beer halls wouldn't notice if the place was abandoned. Students came to beer halls under cover of dark (like everyone else), removed anything that proclaimed them as scholars (making them look like everyone else), and generally kept to themselves (in short, like every other drunk in the city). It was a deliriously important place, one that commanded the attention of all the other courts when it decided to speak up... but in the neighbourhood, it was a silent non-entity that most people barely thought about. A fragment of golden oblivion surrounded by teeming city streets.

And the Court felt much the same way about itself. If the world beyond ceased, every scholar would look up at once, hum at the sudden quiet, and would get back to work. At least, until they began to starve, or run out of tea and honey - whichever came first. They liked their dusty corridors, and their huge libraries, and their quietudes. The Court was a soaring monolithic thing, it was building after building growing over itself like an anthill - there was something of the ziggurat about it. Something which felt ambitious and vaulting... and clumsy. It was ascension, yes, but a meandering ascension. It was high, but it strolled to its heights. Never raced. And nothing could be built until the things below had been completed and expanded and perfected. The central areas could reach high, high, high... and the basements went low, low, low... and the labyrinths of alcoves and offices and libraries and laboratories were wide, wide, ever-so-wide. A person could get lost here for days if they so pleased. Some did. And the world beyond knew nothing of it. Nothing in the slightest. Just as the Court of Ivory only chose to know what it thought important about the outside world - in short, only a little, and that little was deliciously refined and highly vital. Isolated, quiet, dusty, studious... walled off from the world beyond.

This was a situation that worked out quite well for those on both sides of that wall.

But on rare occasions, something broke this calm. Something moved through the veil dividing the golden void from the world beyond, and brought with it a hint of unease. People never liked being uneasy in the Court of Ivory. It was a plague that spread through the scholars - a nervous tapping of a pen that radiated through a silent library, gradually binding others to its agitated rhythms. A laugh from a secretary that came a little higher than it ought to, and prompted a series of high-pitched giggles from the rest of the scriptorium workers - back before there were typing pools, of course. After that, giggles could barely be heard over the clicking and clacking of finely-oiled and much-abused keys. The visitor became known to everyone else through those giggles, spreading like a wave through the dusty halls and vacant courtyards, into the stacks of leatherbound books rising high into dark, heavy ceilings, into the strange rooms with no discernible purpose but existing. Even in the often-forgotten Blue Room, which mostly just consisted of very many blue-themed murals, the lone caretaker caught a whiff of the strangeness in the air and pulled his heavy monkey coat about himself, muttering that the world wasn't what it used to be.

Something was moving in the Court.

Something which was not meant to be here.

Scholars had been reporting a whole host of weird noises for days now, and the common point uniting them all was the roof. This alone wasn't too unusual. Birds lived there, as birds were wont to do. But this was heavier. Sometimes large animals got caught up there, and it'd be someone's job to go and push them off. But this felt lighter. More skittish, but not as skittish as a rodent or a pigeon. Bold, but not as bold as some stray beast that had clambered down from the mountains surrounding the Court, surrounding the whole city of ALD IOM. It was in that eerie middle ground in which lay ambiguity, and in ambiguity, possibility, and in possibility, threat. Something was up there. It was not meant to be there. Scratches and steps, sniffing, chewing, light breathing, and the occasional sound which was, in some way, not very animalistic. The scholars didn't debate this very much. But the secretaries did. They tended to talk about these things - easier in those days, before typewriters were the norm. Easier to talk over the scratches of pens than the clunking of machinery, no matter how oiled. And they seemed to have a developing idea.

A human.

A child, maybe.

The sightings built up, and became the source of not insignificant discussion among the scriptoriums which served the numerous scholars, copying their notes, writing their letters, generally making the irritating processes of life more smooth, to assist the ready passage of thoughts. Same reason why scholars never married, really. If they had to worry about luncheon arrangements with their wives or husbands, if they had (Founder forbid) children to worry about... well, no-one could philosophise under those circumstances. Not unless they were going to be rampant misanthropic nihilists. And the Court of Ivory prided itself on a plurality of opinions - a whole college of nihilists would just be miserable. Anyway, in those scriptoriums engaged with the act of mental lubrication, there were rumours of a child up there. Or something out to steal firstborns, which felt like a bad move in a place which generally practiced quite extensive scholarly celibacy.

Sightings, nonetheless, added up. And the secretaries gossiped.

A scholar complaining about some of his food going missing before he ate it.

A secretary irritated over how quickly the scriptorium's samovar was being drained.

A night guardsman irritated at how often he was twitching.

Sounds at first.

And then vision.

A wiry shape disappearing out of a window, scuttling up the brickwork like a faintly awkward spider - one with a chunk of poundcake stored in its mouth.

A shadowy thing that seemed to spend rather too much time around one of the dining halls - glimpsed only as an intense brown eye through one of the windows. But the moment eye contact was made... it vanished.

And then a cook woke up to see one of the freshly-made biscuit tins being plundered by something which by a charitable estimate resembled a human child.

A sighting was confirmed.

It was like trying to find a bloody cryptid. Always shadows and shapes and vague notions, but never anything solid, never anything concrete. But one junior secretary, Alla, found herself talking at length on the issue to a few other juniors - new girls, mostly, freshly raised out of the studium after being deemed too ignorant to go on to be scholars. But they were literate, and they were used to what scholars wanted, and they had proven some degree of intelligence. The real washouts were made janitors or cooks, anything above was a secretary, and then there were the scholars. The children of anyone in the Court entered the studium, and thus the entire Court sustained itself without having to condescend to the outside world on too many occasions. Worked for them - the lower grades often had nothing better to do than produce children they knew the court would take care of. And, well, scholars could have a little illicit love on the side of things, so long as any results were unceremoniously deposited into the studium and no-one was the wiser on the topic of parentage. Anyway. Alla, a willowy brunette with a lazy eye and the posture of a piano player, was talking to a number of other secretaries, talking at length of the sightings. One of them, Melqua, was rather intense on the topic - had a bit of a soft spot for the kiddiwinks, Alla thought.

"Well, she seems young, I'll say that."

A secretary laughed.

"Really? How can you be so sure it's a she? I hear there's so much filth on the thing that no-one really knows-"

"It's a she, I assure you. Definitely. Heard her yelping when she trod on a sharp tile up there."

Melqua gasped, pressed her hands to her lips in shock. Oh, sometimes she could be far too emotional. Alla continued.

"Young, I know that much. Wire-thin scrap of a girl, fairly young in the grand scheme of things, living up on the roof. Oh, and she looks a state from what I've heard. Her fingers are all bloodied from clutching roof tiles, her feet are blotched with bruises, her legs are stained with sunburn, and her eyes... well, they're apparently intense, and she looks like some kind of veteran - like she should be growling around a cigarette, cigarillo, whatever the youngsters are smoking these days."

Another laugh, and someone cut her off before she could go on a diatribe about what the youngsters were smoking instead of good, honest pipes.

"Sounds a right state."

Melqua's voice was quiet.

"...she's not... terribly hurt, is she?"

Alla looked at her in mild irritation with one eye - her other eye was somewhere completely different, of course.

"She's a child, they heal from anything, they're like starfish."

Melqua stared at her lazy eye.

"Shut up."

"I didn't say-"

"She's a little girl on the roof who looks like a filthy beast, there. And let me tell you something - I've seen her."

Everyone was silent.

"I've seen her. She was stealing food from my master while he was out picking up a book. She stank of mildew, that was the first thing I noticed. Her clothes stank of mildew, were dotted with bird droppings... mostly just rags, and instead of shoes she just had more rags. And she hunched, that was something else. She hunched like she was afraid I was going to steal from her. And those eyes... really, the scholars have no idea how to describe them. She looked like she was about to bite my nose off if I dared come close, I thought she was about to hiss at me. And the rags... it seemed like she'd been plundering scraps from old cloakrooms, based on the dust and material. Lucky no-one's caught her doing that, they'd give her such a hiding... the point is, she looked at me, blinked with those huge, brown eyes, and scuttled away like a startled animal, all the speed her little malnourished body could muster."

A short secretary with mousy hair and a rat-like face shrugged.

"No need to worry about it. I've been carrying a little cudgel under my desk for days. Either she dies, clears off, or gets cleared off, the little rodent. Whichever works, really. She's up on a roof, to be perfectly honest, if she falls it's on her. You don't see sympathy for someone who knowingly picks up a hot coal and then acts surprised when their hand is burned to a crisp."

Melqua looked at her in muted horror. Alla drove over any interruptions with practiced ease - there were many secretaries, and she'd told this story many times.

"Ah, but that's not all. You see, she resembles an urchin. Not just some common beggar, but a hardened little street tough. Probably already killed a man, I'm sure."

Melqua raised her hand, keeping her voice low and inoffensive.

"...how could you tell?"

Alla was pleased at this question, and the dialogue drew another few arrivals into her little circle of tea-drinking secretaries.

"Well. She has the look, you see - you remember when I had to go and buy some pre-digestif for my master? Well, I had to walk down some nasty streets at a late hour, and I saw some types, believe you me. And this girl has the look of one of those brutes. The teeth, you see. The teeth. A little yellow, of course, but there's some deep brown stains."

Blank stares.

"She chews coca, you dolts. It's what the menials chew when they can't afford anything better. You fill your cheeks with the stuff like a squirrel and munch away. Stains your teeth something awful, especially the strain that's grown in the foothills, but it apparently lets them find bliss by becoming absolute idiots. And being on a roof in this weather... well, the girl certainly comes across as an idiot, I'll say that much. So, she chews coca, and she has a nasty little look in her eyes. Beastly creature."

An older secretary murmured quietly.

"Where's she from?"

Alla paused, calculating her response. The others leaned in, interested.

"Some... off-cut from one of the other courts, I'm sure. I couldn't quite tell which. She has that rangy, weatherbeaten look, but I'm not sure if that's just from being a coca-chewing urchin, or if it's because she's from the Court of Horn - doesn't have the eyes, though, too big. Right colour, though. And speaking of colour - I think I saw her skin past the grime, it's that dusky colour that the Court of the Axe produces from time to time. And that'd be fitting - the Axe slums producing some little rodent that scurries up our drainpipes and steals our food. They barely even maintain their buildings anymore, no wonder they're shedding so many beggars in our direction, they can barely sustain actual citizens - and the beggars are always the first wave to come out when things are going poorly, they had an eye for these things. Anyhow, we ought to put someone up-"

The elderly secretary interrupted again, murmuring mildly.

"Just those two?"

Alla glared.

"Yes. That's my opinion. I doubt she's from any of the other courts. Now, I've been talking to..."

But most people had lost interest. Alla had information - but they didn't particularly care for her personally. A bit too in love with her own voice. They drifted away, Melqua included, puzzling over who the urchin was, why they were here, and... well, frankly, how to get rid of the thing. Urchins were best kept at a distance. Give them charity, sure, but letting them onto a roof just felt like a recipe for disaster for everyone involved. Especially the urchin. And anyone unlucky to be under her when she fell down. Not that that was all they worried about - they weren't heartless monsters - but they had to think about the fact that an urchin falling on one of their own would spell a dead anonymous child and a dead someone-they-actually-knew-and-possibly-liked. And in the grand scheme of things, they were going to favour the latter. At least, that was how they justified it to themselves.

And a few days later, a few more days of near-sightings and muffled footsteps...

The child had come inside.

Openly.

People expected her to fall off, run away...

No-one expected her to actually try and talk.

No idea where she'd entered from, but she seemed to be on a mission. She strode boldly through the dusty corridors, stinking of mildew, with the brown-stained teeth that Alla had described. No food tempted her. No cloakrooms either. No money, no drink, nothing that would usually attract an urchin in a place like this. She was so focused that she actually managed the improbable - and wasn't stopped.

...though it was the start of a busy day. Most people were working, and just ignored the light footsteps in the corridors beyond their offices.

Her bold journey ended at the door of Brother Yanis, a distinguished scholar of the court, distinguished enough to have a stable of four secretaries instead of the conventional one or two. The secretaries in question had stared silently from their rickety desks which clacked and creaked like living things on the black-and-white chequered stone floor. Their scriptorium was an old one - the paint peeled in the corners, the floor was muddied with tiny imperfections, and the solitary painting was of a miserable-looking woman with exposed breasts praying in a small, dingy room. Meant to be inspirational or aspirational or some other -tional. Irrational. Aggravational. Either way, the newest things in the room were the samovar holding the strongest tea the secretaries could brew with the leaves Yanis afforded them, and the inscription over the door. Renewed ritually each year - the gold in the letters removed delicately, the carvings sharpened and cleaned, and new gold embedded within. Any remnants were stored in a heaving, ancient urn in one of the courtyards, in correspondence to some law written in some old book in some old dialect that only some old masters really understood. And now the girl stood under it, staring up with incomprehension written clearly on her filthy face.

QUZ AXAXAXA UQLON.

Sacred words of the founder, he who'd written the foundational documents of the Court of Ivory, and whose words were ingrained in the minds of the scholars permitted to memorise them. Only scholars were permitted to learn the meaning of the inscription - only them. No-one else. The secretaries glanced at each other, trying to figure out what to do. No-one came here, children certainly didn't, and urchins most definitely did not. This was unprecedented, and none of them had had enough tea to really think about engaging. The girl looked half-feral. No-one wanted to get close. Matted brown hair was tied up with a loose rag, her face was wide by nature and narrowed by hunger, her eyes burned with an emotion they didn't quite want to categorise.

She strode to the door.

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And with a single, painfully thin hand, she knocked.

Silence.

One of the secretaries giggled nervously, and the sound spread. Just instinct. None of them found this remotely funny. And nor did the girl, who refused to look at them, standing with her sharp chin held high and her fists clenched.

Something shuffled behind the door. Papers were moved. Books had silk scraps inserted into the pages to hold them open. And a voice called out, croaky from lack of use.

"...yes? What is it?"

The girl hesitated... and knocked again. Louder. The voice grumbled, and the sturdy frame of Brother Yanis eased its way forward. He wasn't fat - but he was sturdy, and without physical exercise (beyond carrying books and teapots), he'd simply achieved size. It made him fill up the doorframe easily, and he stared down with frazzled brown eyes at the child below him. His scholarly robes flapped just above his knees, and his face was twitching as it tried to find an emotion to settle on. The furious brown eyes of the girl below stared right back. And her voice rang out, clear as a bell, and twice as piercing.

"You're my father."

Yanis blinked.

"...I'm sorry?"

"You're my father."

She dug in her pockets, and brought out a sheet of crumpled paper - expensive stuff, and covered in delicate writing in expensive ink. The only cheap think about it was the hand that held the mass aloft. She shook it in his face like it was a talisman - she obviously couldn't read, to her the paper was probably the equivalent of some magical amulet. He tried to track it, and one of his large hands reached to grab - she withdrew it with a small hiss echoing from between her teeth.

"You're my father. My mama said you were. She has documents."

A proud thrust of the chin. There... was something a little familiar there. Maybe. The secretaries glanced at one another, too nervous even to giggle.

Yanis blinked once more. He wasn't ready for today.

"...look, young lady, I'm not sure what you-"

Her voice rose higher, and louder, and it made everyone present wince with its force.

"You're my father! My mama is Timla vo Anka, I am eight years old, my mama said you loved her when you were a student and she was a beer hall barmaid, and my name is Carza and I'm here to-"

Yanis lunged, all slowness gone. His size seemed to tighten as his awareness increased, and his eyes boiled with some of their customary intelligence... and more than a little panic. He grabbed her by her wrist, and dragged her inside. The door slammed, and all the secretaries heard was a muffled rumble as Yanis roared at the girl in the softest tones he could manage without speaking normally. Something along the lines of 'listen here, you little bloody fool, you hand over those documents, and-'. He never finished. The girl screamed back, and louder. And this much they heard clearly. Repetitions of 'you're my father, mama said so!' and 'look at my documents, look at them!' and 'mama died from winter fever, and she told me to come to you'. Over and over and over, the same ideas repeated with childish petulance. The secretaries quietly gathered around the samovar and poured themselves extra-strong cups, barely diluted at all. They sipped quietly, and tried to ignore what was happening. One of them, the youngest, told the others that she'd heard about this urchin from Alla in the office next door. The eldest shushed her, and said that if any of them thought about telling the others about this little confrontation, she would personally make sure they were never found again.

She was an old sort of secretary who had gained the nickname of 'Mother' around the office. She was a mother to the others, and a mother to Yanis - always bustling him around and pre-empting his decisions. Yes, he needed a clean robe. Yes, he needed to drink some water before he left. Yes, his shoes were being shined, it was already predicted. And she mothered him as a protector as well - the world beyond was not for scholars, it was ugly and filthy and full of ignorance. And part of that separation meant celibacy. And Yanis was no exception.

Though... well, evidently not so much.

Because the conversation behind the door was distinctly not ending with 'and don't you think of plying anyone else with this bloody story'. It wasn't ending at all. Lunch came. A plate was set down on the narrow table outside the door - enough for one. A knock. And nothing. The secretaries glanced at one another. No screams or bellows. The two had either killed one another, or one had killed the other and was making a getaway, or, worst of all, they were talking.

A second later, one of the secretaries, the youngest, trotted over from her desk, slippers moving over the tiled floor without much more than a whisper, to place a small pile of biscuits next to the lunch. And a glass of milk, after a second's thought. The others stared at her, and Mother glared. You never fed them, if you fed them then they'd stay. And that would be wrong. Hours passed. The court was a ponderous place full of dark corners, and upgrades took time to roll out - the secretaries had heard of interesting lighting mechanisms in some of the higher offices, but for them... oil lamps. Greasy light that barely managed to make their papers legible. Letters to other scholars that needed writing out, academic responses that needed proof-reading and proper copying, notes that needed to be transcribed into actual text instead of mad scrawls so they could be filtered out to students... the lunch still hadn't been taken in, and the youngest secretary kept biting her lower lip, glancing nervously over, eyes almost invisible behind thick spectacles. The light had gradually destroyed all of their eyesights, and heavy metal oculars were more or less mandatory. The glass hadn't been properly honed yet, and the frames were too heavy and needed to be held on small stands. Looked like one of the microscopes that the more scientific scholars used from time to time. And they sat, their laboratory of secretaries in a dusty scriptorium, and worked.

And silence remained behind the door.

Hours more.

Night was here.

It was, by all rights, the time to go back to their dormitories. They'd done what they meant to for the day, nothing remained... but they all stood around the samovar nonetheless and fed little scraps of kindling into the central chimney, anything to keep the water hot. At this point the tea was nothing more than a vague essence clinging to the steam, but they drank their cups greedily nonetheless. Anything to shock them awake. Their clicking, clacking desks were left empty as they huddled together against the winter chill. And finally, one of them spoke. There were four of them - Mother, the eldest and most learned. Laris, with her green eyes and muddy brown hair that made her look like she'd been sculpted from the matter at the bottom of a pond. Cerys, with her slightly bulging eyes, slight underbite, and slightly malformed ears that made her look a tad bit off at all times. And the youngest, Melqua, still a bit gangly around the edges, still uncomfortable in her official garments, still with faint, barely-healed scars on her cheekbones from her initiations into adulthood.

Melqua went first.

"...we can't just leave the two of them in there, something might've happened."

Mother sniffed.

"Idiot. We've done our work. You three can go, I need to see the scholar back to his chambers and inform him of some urgent communications from his colleagues - as your senior, that's my area. You're no longer needed. Go to bed, be useful tomorrow instead of useless tonight and tomorrow because you refused to sleep."

But she didn't do anything to enforce her orders. As uncertain as the rest of them. Laris sniffed and coughed.

"I'm bloody starving, that's what I am. I wouldn't mind getting a bite if we're going to be here for much longer. Cerys, could you do a run?"

Cerys grunted in a very unladylike manner, something Mother noted and tutted over.

"You go. I'm not hungry."

Laris bristled, ready for a fight... but the silence behind the door was a singularity which swallowed each and every word they spoke, leaving all sentences feeling a little pendulous, a little strained. Unfinished in every way. Her shoulders slumped, and she morosely traced a finger around the inside of her teacup, scraping away some of the accumulated tannin stains.

"...fine, fine. I'll fetch us some sandwiches if the canteen has any left."

Mother sniffed once more.

"Unnecessary."

Melqua twitched.

"Get the girl something, won't you? She looks ever so thin, and..."

Mother glared.

"There is no girl, as far as I am concerned. If a girl emerges from that door, then we may consider her. But until she does, she does not exist in my estimations. And I'd rather leave it that way."

"...she looks half-starved, Laris, get her a sandwich at least."

Cerys grunted again.

"Get her a bone, she looks like a gnawer. Bit rat-like, isn't she?"

Laris grinned.

"Bit. Thought she was going to gnaw my bloody ankles off. Think she's got lice?"

Attempts to reassert control over a situation they really had no grounding in. They were all trained secretaries, their fingers were callused from years of writing and copying... the studium in the lower court was full of people like them. The children of cleaners and low-grade officials who'd been admitted to the court, and hadn't quite passed the bar of entry for scholarships. So, they were made literate, and set to work. And in some, that cultivated a slightly desperate superiority to the outside world. With people above them and people below them, they had a very keen sense of who they were, and where they stood in the grand reckoning of things. In some, that did nothing. In others, it made them paranoid. Keenly aware of how weak they were... and how far they could fall if others were so inclined. Mother was one of those. Cerys and Laris had some of the mocking habits, if not the complete mindset. And Melqua hadn't quite been around for long enough to get a sense of where she was in the first place. Still clutched her uniform nervously, almost expecting people to try and steal it or interrogate her over daring to wear something she really wasn't suited for. But even with her nerves...

"Don't be so rude, you two. She looks like she's been living on the roof for days, Alla next door said she'd seen someone up there. Probably frozen half to death, poor mite. Go on, at least get her a-"

Her words died.

The door had opened.

Yanis stood there, face uncharacteristically solemn. Usually he looked downright boyish - perpetual youth from perpetual study and very little else. Same look that most of the scholars had, really. The world beyond forgotten deprived them of any reason to grow into toughened adults, so they might as well remain enthusiastic, petty, and almost innocent in some ways. Now, he looked... well, his age. Which was damn unusual. The girl stood beside him, still hunched over like she thought someone was about to steal her things, eyes still darting from place to place like a frightened rodent. Yanis grabbed her shoulder, and quietly propelled her forwards into the staring eyes of the four secretaries.

"Put her in the studium, say I authorised it. And if any one of you says a word about what happened here today…"

He trailed off. Not given to threats, and all of them knew it. He flashed a small, crooked smile, trying to play this all off as something easy and casual. Always happened, right? Sometimes you just felt like giving a completely random urchin a place in the studium where they could make something of themselves, perfectly ordinary in the grand scheme of things. That was the image he tried to project. Didn't quite work - they could see the sweat marks under his arms, and the places where his nails had dug red half-moons into the soft, pen-grooved flesh of his palms. Stressed, and stressed over a long period. Behind him, in his office, they could see the papers the girl had brought - probably going to get burned soon enough. Right, still a child - and children were dumb. They blinked, almost in unison. Even Mother hadn't quite expected this outcome.

"...sir?"

"Go on, Mother, put her in with the rest. And don't be too loud about it."

"...but, there's... paperwork to be done, should she be registered as an orphan? If so, we'll need to draw up a reference for her character, and-"

Yanis turned, ignoring her, and fixed his eyes on Melqua.

"You there. Melqua. How old are you?"

"...twenty-one, sir."

"Old enough, I suppose. Go on, make sure she gets something to sleep on."

"...sir?"

He sighed.

"It's easier if she has a parent to go under. You're part of the court, any one of your children would be able to go into the studium. Just... let her sleep under your cot or something until she can move in with the others."

"...sir, I'm twenty one. She said she's... eight, so unless I had her when I was..."

She blushed self-consciously. She'd need to have been having children at age thirteen, which was generally frowned upon by the Court of Ivory. Also, would've been painfully obvious to her colleagues.

"...I mean, it just doesn't seem like a feasible story, and..."

Yanis realised his mistake, grimaced, and overrode her with a casual wave of his hand and a raised voice.

"Say she's your niece, then. I'll mangle the records, you put her through. Once she has some academic records to her name, she'll be in the system and won't be gotten out. Just... make it quiet, alright? And give her a bath. And try not to tell anyone. And..."

He paused, scanning the room.

"I'll see about getting some new chairs, how about that?"

The secretaries glanced at each other, and Laris quietly spoke.

"...could we get them with reclining backs?"

Cerys grinned.

"Yes, sir, wouldn't mind some reclining backs. With leather upholstery."

Mother glared at them... and a second later, sighed.

"...I wouldn't mind some proper arm-rests, sir, the desks are doing unpleasant things to my elbows, and at my age-"

"I'll work it out, bloody harridans. Yes. Fine. New seats. Now get this girl out of my sight, understood?"

Nods all around.

"...and her name's Carza. What's your last name, Melqua?"

"vo Larima, sir."

"Alright, hear that Carza? You're Carza vo Larima now."

And for the first time since returning, the girl herself spoke, her eyes flashing with anger. Her mouth was speckled with crumbs - how and when had she found those biscuits? She hadn't moved, how had... Melqua wasn't sure if she was impressed or a little disturbed. What else had she pick-pocketed?

"No! My name is Carza vo Anka, father, and-"

He ducked down, his huge face dwarfing hers as he stared into her large, piercing eyes.

"Don't bloody call me that, alright? You don't... look, do not call me father, not under any circumstances, am I understood?"

"But-"

"If you do, you'll be back out there on the roof, or wherever it is you came from. Fine. Carza vo Anka. I'll... fudge the records."

Melqua hesitated, twisting her hands nervously in her uniform. Yanis nodded awkwardly and stumped off, obviously as uncomfortable with this as the rest of them. His door slammed, and the newborn moonlight gleamed on the inscription above, the prayer to the founder that only he understood - he and his scholarly visitors. The four secretaries glanced at one another. Carza stared up at them, crumbs still marking her lips and jaw. Laris and Cerys locked eyes, grinned, and slapped Melqua on the back, making her stumble forwards.

"Congratulations, it's a rat-thing. You must be so proud."

Mother sniffed and snapped her fingers, driving them off for a moment as the threat of docked pay hung over their heads. The older woman stared down at Melqua... and her eyes softened, just for a second.

"Best of luck."

Melqua was pale as a sheet.

Carza was staring at her with eerily mature eyes. Seen too much. Grown up too fast. And Melqua barely knew what to do with her.

"...well, my name is Melqua vo Larima. Good to meet you, Miss vo Anka."

Carza stared continuously, and Melqua felt very glad that she didn't have a knife on her at that exact moment.

"Did you... enjoy those biscuits?"

More stares, and a small grunt, followed by:

"Yes. I did. Thank you."

Curt, and strange. Like she wasn't used to conversation of this sort. Each step was an effort - the grunt had been her automatic response, 'yes' had been unusual, 'I did' had been unnatural, and 'thank you' was on the further fringes of complete madness. She shuffled from foot to foot, but her eyes remained locked on Melqua.

"...d'you have any coca, miss?"

"Uh. I... don't think so, no."

Carza looked crestfallen.

"I'm sure I can find you something else."

Melqua quietly promised to find some brandy or something. Her parents had helped her sleep from time to time with a small glass of warmed brandy, should work with this... thing, which could be called a child. It was much easier to be sympathetic towards her when she was a bit further away, and her eyes were out of sight and mind. There was something intense about them, and Melqua honestly wondered if there was something on her face that was attracting any attention. But checking would be an admission of weakness, and she felt like that might not be a good idea around this... uh, person. She brushed a lock of dirty blonde hair aside, and smiled nervously. A flat stare met her. And quietly, Melqua took Carza's unresisting hand and began to lead her off, her eyes still wide with alarm at this entire situation.

And into the dusty, moonlit void of the Court of Ivory, vanished an urchin and a secretary.

Unnoticed by all but a few night watchers who nodded quietly and returned their attention to their own nightly activities of dice-shooting and tea-drinking. No reference would ever be made to that night in official records. Carza vo Anka, niece of secretary Melqua vo Larima, would be admitted to the studium of the Court of Ivory, and to all but a select few... that was the simple fact of things.

And that suited everyone involved just fine.

After all, no-one was crawling on the roof any more.

* * *

Melqua opened the door to her small cell. As a secretary, she was granted a cell in the lower middle east-south fourth wing of the Court of Ivory's primary seat. It was pretty nice, all things considered. She got a cot. Table. Boxes of varying descriptions. A chair. A small wardrobe built into the wall. Pretty good, all things considered. Better that the people outside the court. Carefully, she slipped off her slippers - no shoes in the offices, or near them, or in the libraries, or near them, or in the galleries... after a point, slippers were just the default. And hers were quite nice indeed. She spread her arms out, and spoke as loudly as she dared without annoying someone. Anyone. Never knew who was listening.

"Surprise! Uh, you can... stay here for a few days, just until we... get you to the studium."

Carza was nowhere to be found.

Oh no. She'd lost her.

Melqua glanced around frantically a few times, before... oh. Carza was hiding behind her legs, staring suspiciously at the room beyond. Oh. It... did look a little prison-like, from a certain angle. The only window was a small slit in the wall, far too small for even Carza's whip-thin frame to move through. Cold thing, too - she usually left it buried under old blankets to keep the warmth in. Quietly, she stepped into the room, and sat down on the cot, reaching out to ignite her oil lamp.

"It's quite alright, Carza. You can come in."

The girl was unsteady in the door. Wanted something to hide behind, to climb on, to grip... her hands kept trying to curl around something. Not sure what. Melqua patted the surface of the cot beside her.

"Come on, sit down."

Carza just kept staring with those large, intense eyes... still made her uncomfortable to look at. What could it be that was alarming her so much? It was small, and a bit... prison-ish, but that was about it. It had provisions, it had everything a girl like her could want. Like a cot. And a chair. It suited Melqua well enough, at least. What could... oh. The roots. Her eyes flicked up... and Carza's followed her. The roots in the ceiling. The court was old. Very old. They said thousands of years, but they said a lot of things. It didn't matter - it was here now, and it would be here by the time Melqua died, and that was more than enough for her to feel safe and content. She smiled shyly, and tucked a lock of dirty blonde hair behind her ear. She felt a little self-conscious, honestly. It was... it was petty, but she wanted to impress Carza a little. A small child climbing into the court and then effectively blackmailing her own father for a position in the studium... it impressed her, of course it did. And she wanted to show that she'd made the right choice. Project to her the same faith that she herself held in the Court of Ivory's endurance. Which was... difficult. She looked a bit like a potato, in her own estimations. A nice potato, a homely potato, but a potato nonetheless. Carza was all spikes and sharpness, while Melqua was aware that she was... neither of those things. She was rather soft, honestly.

And she spoke, appropriately, with great softness.

"The court used to have a courtyard up there, once. They wanted rooftop gardens. But they seemed to... forget that the place existed. It was lost in paperwork, I think. Hidden by a new parapet. And the rooftop was lost. Except for one tree. It grew, and grew, and grew, and wormed its way through the bricks, until…"

Until she had a little chandelier of roots above her bed. Dead, quite dead, but... they were curling brown strands which thrummed with a kind of life. Old life. Gone life. But it was life still - a reminder that it had once been, and might come again. Melqua couldn't say why she liked her little root chandelier. It didn't do much. The tree had been carefully killed years and years and years ago, to stop any more structural damage. She'd been assured that the roof wasn't going to collapse on her any time soon. And... the root remained. It formed a teardrop-shape - bulging in the middle and slowly converting to a point later on. A bulb would be another word, but teardrops seemed more poetic. Melqua liked it. She liked the way it scattered the light of her oil lamp, and the way it seemed to make a pleasant change to the grey stone, and the way it seemed as though the whorls and knots formed small deformed faces which grinned or scowled down at her. Like the faces of strange performers - a whole circus of them. She was always at her most fanciful when she was going to sleep, and it was nice to stare at a root-bound circus when she was in a fanciful mood.

Carza stared up at it, almost hypnotised for a moment. And Melqua took the opportunity to lead her to the bed.

She could feel scars underneath her raggedy clothes. She was like a doll made of strands of straw, bound up in whatever a farmer could find lying around his house, and given to his daughter who was too young to have any real standards.

The sympathy she remembered feeling when she first heard of the roof-urchin came rushing back in full force, overpowering any kind of personal reticence - that she was too young to take care of someone else, that she was dooming herself by being tied to this mess, that this was all too exciting and strange for her to really get involved with...

She felt a small, thin, sharp-looking girl with intense glaring eyes, and felt scars underneath her fingertips, as gnarled and old as the roots which hung above her head.

And for a second, the two of them simply rested.

"Welcome to the Court of Ivory, Carza. I hope you enjoy your time here."

Carza paused, and spoke. When she wasn't trying to project confidence, she had a low, rather strange voice which she didn't seem comfortable listening to.

"I don't want to leave. Ever."

Melqua squeezed her shoulder.

"You don't need to. You could spend the rest of your life here, if you like."

"I will."

A flash of determination in her intense eyes. And Melqua watched her until all light faded from those large eyes, and she collapsed into a handful of sticks curled into a tight ball at the end of the cot - a sharp cat with tufty brown hair and coca stains on her teeth. A blanket was draped over her.

Melqua could manage without it tonight.