Ussen Ysta Ssyt’s life had taken an impossible twist. She’d come to Uzh in the hopes of meeting the Guardian’s students, of brushing shoulders with knowledge she could use to arm herself. She’d thought her efforts to play the factions within her family off each other would have afforded her a reprieve, would have made any attempts against her on distant, neutral, holy ground not worth the effort. She’d thought her bodyguards and friends would have been enough.

Instead, Kliss and Kiina were dead, bodies floated downriver on their final journey just a few days ago.

Guardian Phaeliisthia’s students had saved her, and now she was staying with the ancient being herself. That quick glimpse of feathered wings as she’d descended on the city in her true form had instilled a primal sort of fear in the ostracized ussen.

Despite the niceties, despite the freedom to roam the estate with minimal guarding, it all only served to heighten Ysta’s fear. For so long, she’d been playing within the hierarchy of the Ssyt family; Phaeliisthia’s was a much larger pond indeed.

Knowing that she could simply be erased with a snap of gold-clawed fingers… Ysta forced herself to inhale and center her thoughts. Cautiously, she glanced at the red-scaled servant next to her. He’d coiled himself up by a shelf neatly packed with scrolls and appeared for all the world to be napping, save for a single, orange eye cracked just enough for the shining pupil to be obvious.

He didn’t speak, so Ysta turned her attention once again to the array of scrolls on the table before her. So much knowledge—there must be a price. And she knows that my family will prise this knowledge from my mind with blasphemous magics or equally blasphemous tortures.

So then, if I look, will I ever be granted leave? Will I shackle myself to her whims? Is that simply what’s happened to the other servants?

Ysta snuck another glance at the red-scaled servant. This time, his one half-open eye moved, meeting hers.

The small lania’el yawned, covering his mouth daintily. “Do you have any questions, Ussen Ysta?”

Yes. “No.”

“Forgive my impertinence, but I don’t believe that to be true.” He raised an arm and pointed to the dimming light stone on the table. All around the pair, the shadows in Phaeliisthia’s library had grown quite dark indeed.

Ysta drew in a breath, barely stopping herself from touching the sigil array’s terminus to imbue the tiny construct with more power. “N-no, not at all,” she stammered. “I’m just… in awe of this library.”

The servant opened his other eye, studying her with an intense expression. Such a thing would have been punished in Ysta’s—she supposed former—home. Here, however, he clearly had no fear of reprisal.

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“Go ahead,” he said calmly. “If you treat the light fixtures with the same apparent reverence you do these scrolls and tomes, then I might just get a full day’s rest.”

Ysta snorted before she could stop herself. As if to cover her gaffe, she touched the sigil array and lit the lamp, chasing away the shadows. For a brief moment, she was reminded of the night she’d nearly died, of the strange powers at play. She’d seen them before. She wasn’t supposed to have seen them, but it could hardly be the reason she was chased down to Uzh, could it?

Ysta had been avoiding thinking about that night, diving instead into her usual magical studies. Now, however, her curiosity had been piqued. “Actually… does Phaeliisthia have any materials I could read concerning the strange shadow powers the assassins used?”

“She does.” The servant paused just long enough that Ysta wasn’t sure he’d continue. “I can fetch some scrolls, but the book right in front of you has much information surrounding the topic, even if it is not within the scope of the narrative.”

Ysta looked down. The title of the small, leather-bound tome was simply Journal of a Traveler, although more was written below it in a strange text composed of many small, simple symbols in long rows. The serendipity of it all frightened the ussen. She didn’t remember taking the tome from a shelf.

When she turned to the servant, he was already gone, though from the rustling of scales she could hear he was still nearby. Cautiously, as if handling an agitated serpent, Ysta opened the book. Aside from a short description about the work being a transcription of events that may or may not be exaggerated, the text was all in that same unfamiliar language and script.

Ysta stared at it until the servant returned.

“Can’t read Human Imperial?” he asked, setting a small stack of scrolls on the table.

Ysta shook her head. “That’s what this is written in?”

“Indeed. I can translate it for you, if you’d like. Some words won’t quite have equivalents, like with any translation. Regardless, some of the passages are already done, and in the scrolls I just brought.”

“May I?”

“If you are allowed to read the original, the copies are certainly free—and you are allowed to read the original. Mistress is… unusually trusting of late. Please reward her with your care and continued cooperation.”

Ysta looked askance at the servant, but he’d already turned his head, aiming himself back toward his warm spot nearby. Carefully, the nervous ussen took the first scroll and began to read. Soon, she took another.

Then another.

Then she asked for Zinniz to translate some sections, and asked again for clarification. Ussen Ysta Ssyt knew much of her family’s secrets—both ones they knew her to know and others she’d found out to use as leverage.

Now, those secrets made her blood run cold. Hidden expenses, poorly-logged sudden trips, cargo missing from manifests. There could be traced between it all a common thread, one that she’d unknowingly gotten close to pulling.

She felt sick. But more than that, she felt a true, creeping terror that turned the shadows of the library into vicious, malevolent things. Highwater Province. The depths of the sea beyond the Wingscale Islands. Ties to ancient Naulor and a possible hand in the collapse of the human empire. All told through second-hand comments of an outsider traveling the dark corners of the world.

Worse than all that, perhaps, was the possibility—if Ysta’s normally-excellent memory proved true—of ties to the Emerald Palace. The ostracized ussen was safe behind Phaeliisthia’s wards not just because of their strength, but because she might not have been their most important target.

And if those assassins had the ties she thought they might, whether from her family or the Ziilant family, then Phaeliisthia’s students were in grave danger.