Axis IV

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It was ritual at this point to run by Jorah’s for a starberry pastry and her famous lemon slush. As eager as Axis felt to dig into Cir’s sketches, she couldn’t miss work. Breakers notoriously lived in the central library, and Axis had just been promoted to team leader of Persis’ female Breaker sect.

“Axis! I thought you might not make it today,” Jorah called out as Axis approached. Axis was already reaching into her fitted jacket pocket and pulling out her coin pass, a thin metal stick that digitally housed her money. Jorah shared her brother’s shop—each took shifts selling their different wares. Jorah would work the morning shift until two, then Jaspen would take over until closing time at eight, when the sun sunk behind the horizon and the world was bathed in cosmic colors from the galaxy above them.

“Do I ever miss a day?” Axis inserted the pass into the delicate metal box bolted onto the outside of the café. She didn’t need to tell Jorah her order: it was always the same.

“Suppose not,” Jorah replied, grinning. Her golden blonde hair was pulled back into a bun similar to Axis’s, although a few whisps had escaped the organization and were gathering around her cheeks. She moved quickly, wrapping the pastry in wax paper and tucking it in a sturdy white box with “Jorah’s” stamped over the top in flowing script. When Jorah’s part of the shop was closed, she worked as a Scriptorian in Elias, Lore’s capital and the home of the Concord.

“Any juicy slush for me?” Jorah asked as she started adding lemons, sugar, and ice into a steel pitcher and began stirring rigorously.

“You know I don’t keep track of slush. You should ask Lileth.”

“Lileth only parrots what everyone else says. But you, you know, you run in different circles than her. Any slush about fellow Breakers? Is Sircee still wearing her hair down? If she worked in Elias like me, she wouldn’t be able to get away with something like that.”

“Call the Enforcers. Is that really the best slush you’ve got?” Axis teased, reaching for the white box with her breakfast. Jorah slapped her hand away as she stopped stirring the drink and asked, “You bring your cup?”

“Already on the counter,” Axis said, gesturing to the cup she’d fished out of her bag.

“If you think my slush isn’t good enough, let me hear better,” Jorah challenged as she poured the lemon slush into Axis’s cup.

“I actually do have better slush,” Axis murmured under her breath, just loud enough for Jorah to hear her. Louder, she said, “nobody makes better slush than you, Jorah, you know that!” A couple of the women behind Axis laughed and nodded in agreement.

“We need to talk later,” Jorah whispered as she made an outward show of handing Axis her order. “Thanks for coming, Axis!”

“No problem! May Lina watch over you.”

“You too.”

***

“Just the person I wanted to see,” Tyren said dryly as Axis strode into the dome-shaped room housed in the middle of the library.

“No need to sound so excited.” Axis took her time removing her bag and jacket before taking a seat at the large circular table in the middle of the enclosure. Light streamed into the room from every angle—every wall was little more than a floor-to-ceiling window.

Tyren rolled her eyes. Her thin face contrasted with her muscular arms and legs, and her hair was so short it wasn’t pulled up.

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“So I’m a minute late! Not a big deal.”

“Not so sure the Concord would agree with you,” Sashe murmured. Her large blue eyes were hidden behind her huge reading glasses, glasses which seemed at odds with her short, pixie-like form.

“I didn’t get much sleep tonight. Tyren, what has the Concord sent down the pipeline for us today?”

“More old text from Damaris. Found it etched into a stone face. Pictures have been uploaded on our mistleaves. Code name Damaris Stone.”

“Creative,” Sircee said. Her skin was so pale it seemed to glow in the bright sunlight, and her pitch-black hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail.

Not quite what Jorah had described.

“Brooks, timeframe for this assignment?”

The tall woman was eager to answer. “Two days and five hours.”

“How long will it take for us to get it done?”

“Nineteen hours and forty-six minutes.”

“And the seconds?” Tyren asked sarcastically.

“Nine and a half,” Brooks responded, unfazed.

“Sircee and Sashe, can you analyze the images and turn them into text for us?”

“Starstraight we can!” Sircee barked out. Sashe nodded, still looking down at the large book laying on the table in front of her.

“Tyren and Brooks?”

“Not happening.” Tyren’s arms were folded.

“Not up for discussion,” Axis snapped back, tucking a loose curl back into her bun and taking a sip of her lemon slush.

“You two will start running the text through every known Cipher we have. Let me know if any of you run into problems. I’ll join you in a couple hours—there’s something I need to look into.”

Tyren grumbled, but Axis knew it was mostly for show. As the four women started taking out their mistleaves and pulling up the images, Axis approached one of the windows that ringed the room. Each window doubled as a bookshelf, housing thousands of books from all twelve rings of Lore: Damaris, Persis, Sapphiris, Matthiah, Elias, Crispus, Junia, Tabithas, Clementia, Thaddeus, Phoebis, and Lazarenth. Light burst around the different books, making the shelves look like they were on fire. Twelve bookshelves for the twelve Loreian cities.

Axis immediately made a beeline for Lazarenth’s section. She’d perused books from each of the shelves in the two years she’d worked as a Breaker, but Lazarenth hadn’t demanded much of her attention. Yes, each of the cities were supposed to be identical in the things that mattered most—goods production, education, tech, political structure, and religion, but each had inevitably become somewhat specialized, although the Concord did everything in their power to stop it.

And Lazarenth’s specialization? Experimenting with new kinds of tech. Mistech in particular.

The room the Breakers shared was large enough that Axis could only hear snatches of the others’ conversation from the middle of the space.

“It’s almost like you want my calculation to be off!”

“You’ll just have to work harder to fulfill your number prophecy.”

“It’s not my fault my brain works 1.56 times faster than yours…”

But all conversation filtered out of Axis’s awareness as she began pulling books off the shelves. It was as though Cir had snuck into the room and reorganized the entire section of volumes. That, and somehow also managed to rewrite the books.

An Abridged History of Laza, Renth in Times of Old, Peoples of Renth, Within the Tech: Laza Skill—she started pulling books off the shelf at random, more and more sunlight streaming into the room as stacks of books started piling up around her. The left side of the bookshelf was clearly dedicated solely to books on “Laza,” whereas the right side of the shelf contained volume after volume on “Renth.”

Axis bit back a gasp—even the bookshelf had been changed. In between the two sections of books was a paper-thin wall of wood, similar to the shelving the books rested on, clearly dividing the two sections.

“Axis?” a voice called out, disrupting Axis’s shocked revery.

Quickly, decisively, Axis began jamming books back into the bookshelf at random, removing the evidence. Even though the four women she worked with were unique and sometimes difficult to get along with, Axis had always considered them her friends.

But this wasn’t something she was ready to share.