The Central District Library was about as grand as Mira expected it to be.

Three stories tall with an enormous dome roof, the outside of this marvelous structure was painted a vibrant baby blue with windows all along its front and sides. The shine glinting from the unnatural neon lights from the top of the cavern told her that the coat was freshly applied but not new enough to come away on her fingertips if she touched it. A large staircase made up of what she assumed to be marble sparkled with novelty, segmented in half by a thick, metal railing and rigged pillars at either side of the steps.

Mira could see people sitting at little tables or lounging in chairs with a book cracked open on their laps from where she was standing. It reminded her vaguely of what some of the regulars at the bakery looked like when they would order tea or coffee with their pastries while they sat around for a chat to avoid whatever errands they had lined up that day.

It shouldn’t have reminded her of home, and yet everything she saw made her miss the quaint little shithole that she had the (sometimes) misfortune of calling home. Sure, Chrome had its darkest corners, but at least it was safe. Safer than where she was right now.

Something prodded her shoulder.

Magic was shaking the reins on Bjorn’s saddle, stroking the animal's face once she turned to stare at him. Under the fluorescent lights, her brother looked unwell, his usual olive skin traded in for something more pale, but Mira didn’t know if that was just a side effect of his discomfort or if the altitude and northern air was making him sick. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to press, so instead, she only said, “What?”

“Are you ready to go in?” he asked.

Mira took a breath. Waiting and stalling would only make her nerves worse. She didn’t know what was going to change beyond those doors, but whatever it was there was no other option than to tackle it head on. “I think so. What about you?”

“I’m ready when you are. I quite like libraries. Mom used to make day trips out of Runesboro’s little bookshops. She would take me with her and we’d read together. Not exactly a library, but close enough.” Then he stopped, took a breath, and glanced at her from his peripheral. “You’ll find your answers.”

“And if we don’t?”

“We look somewhere else. Besides, the constant sulking isn’t like you.”

She pouted. “I’m not sulking,” Mira said. “I was just thinking.”

“And it’s making you sulk. Look, someone has to have the answers somewhere. It’ll turn up.”

A grin found its way onto her face. Surprisingly, Magic mimicked a tinier version of the same smile before urging Bjorn to walk forward. “Plus,” he added, “how are you going to be a thorn in my side when you’re too busy sitting in your own head.”

Typical. Mira nudged Jeralt to follow and this time the goat did so obediently without forcing her into circles. “Oh, quit it. You know I’d manage to do that somehow. My job as your older sister is to generally annoy the crap out of you.”

“Congratulations,” Magic said in his usual flat tone that defeated the purpose of saying something congratulatory, “you’ve managed to succeed so far for the last … What, thirteen years?”

“And I’ll keep doing that until I’m no longer around.”

Her brother shuddered at that and Mira had the faintest feeling she’d stepped over a boundary. That gut intuition was confirmed when Magic grit his teeth and mumbled, “Let’s not consider that, please.”

“Fair enough.” Mira swung her legs to the side and leapt to the ground, motioning for Magic to follow. She took the reins, led Jeralt to the side of the library and, with nothing to tie the reins to, cupped the animal’s face in her hands. Deep blue stardust swirled in the goat’s eyes and Mira wondered how much Jeralt truly understood her. Alaric seemed to think they were borderline human because of the stardust energy; the cipher injected into their blood and bones. Perhaps she’d find out if the animal—and her brother’s—were still around by the time they came out of the library.

“You wait for us,” she said, stroking the goat’s horns. “Wait for us until we get back. Make sure Bjorn doesn’t get startled and run off, either.”

Jeralt huffed, scuffing his hooves along the ground to kick up dirt. Tears burned in Mira’s eyes and she turned her head to avoid the dust clouds only to feel the goat butting his head against her stomach. His eyes were closed, his head bowed, and Mira knew this to be an indicator of trust. The horses back at home always did the same whenever they felt safe and comfortable, and she assumed the same was probably true for the goats.

“Don’t get all mushy on me,” Mira huffed, stepping back to give the goat one final pat on the head before whistling for her brother in the quail call they’d used in Elnoire. Magic looked at her immediately, his arms wrapped around Bjorn’s neck, the side of his face pressed against his goat. “Let’s go, Mags,” she said as he approached (though he gave his goat a couple of backwards glances to make sure Bjorn was still there).

They walked up the steps in silence, neither willing to breach it, though Mira wished she’d had the breath to. Winded as she was, there was no energy in her by the time she reached the top of the deceptively steep steps and anything she could have said she disregarded in favor of focusing on her breathing. Even Magic was exhausted; he looked about ready to lie down for a nap by the time they reached the double doors and, with a very tired thumbs-up, Mira pushed into the bars and let themselves in.

She hadn’t expected the inside of the building to be anything special—while the outside was nice, it didn’t look all that spectacular—but the inside of the library was something to behold. Not even the capital’s buildings looked remotely as regal and well put together, and those folks were practically swimming in zirca coins.

No, the Central District Library was enormous; the double doors echoed as they slammed shut, their momentum only slowed by the mulberry-colored carpet that made up a majority of the floor. Rolled out like a luxurious red carpet that led to the center of the main lobby, where it branched out into diverging pathways, the floor on either side consisted of dark, wooden paneled flooring, bookshelves upon bookshelves stacked beside together like people pushed shoulder to shoulder. Books lined the shelves, their delicate spines turned outwards, some creased from use, others shiny and new.

To her left, she heard her brother make tiny steps, his head lifted up to admire a thin mural that wrapped around the edges of the high ceiling. It was an intricate painting of wildlife, a horde of deer, led at the front by a rabbit with large ears, antlers, and a pelt the color of a midnight sky, but with the light hitting its fur at such an angle that it was a magnificent blue.

Magic whistled, low and short. “Wow.”

“How much do you think this cost to make?” Mira murmured, unable to deny the grandeur. She didn’t know much of what was being portrayed, only that the rabbit looked similar to the carving on the tree in the Maidenwoods. The Spectacle of this place. Soma, they called her.

Her brother only shrugged and was about to open his mouth to speak when another, loud and shot through with exhaustion, echoed along the walls.

“If you’re done gawking, is there anything I can help you with?”

Stationed at the front desk beyond the mulberry carpet was a taller man, hunched and leaned forward with his elbow being the only thing keeping his head up to look at them. The lighting of the library made his dark olive skin obvious, marking him as much an outsider as Mira and her brother. His short brown hair stuck up at odd angles as if he’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed and forgotten to comb it. The cowlicks were rampant and if the man knew about them at all, he did nothing to even try and flatten them. In fact, the more he ruffled his hair, the worse it became and Mira had the slightest feeling that personal care wasn’t high on his list of things to manage.

Despite that, he still looked far more put together than his initial appearance would suggest the closer she got. The leather jacket he wore screamed wealth and buttoned to its front pockets were the standard Droidell pins of flying birds—the same pattern on Magic’s sacrificed knife—contrasting the white shirt he wore underneath. A golden chain necklace lay gently at his collarbone; whatever charms that were attached to it were hidden inside the shirt, the only sign of their presence being the indentations they made on the cotton.

But it wasn’t his scornful scowl, or the way he scoffed at Mira and her brother when they got to the desk that made her nervous.

It was his eyes.

She’d seen her fair share of the strange, mystic eyes, the single white belonging to the half-sights she’d previously met, the rumored double white of the Scepters she’d yet to run into. And Mira thought she’d be desensitized to the amount of variety she never knew existed.

But this stranger’s eyes weren’t mystic, they were weary, out of place on a decently young looking face, the brown in them burnt-out like a candle wick. The only unnatural thing about them were the hazy, white rims that circled his pupils, striking against the deep mocha shade. She could have sworn she’d seen the rings undulate, wavering in the light; Mira felt like he could stare right through her with a gaze like that, and beneath his right eye was a rough-looking scar, jagged and completely uneven. Like the skin had gotten ripped or torn away.

A tiny chill went through her and Magic, too, shuffled uneasily on his feet.

The man took a breath and shook his head. “Great,” he muttered, running a hand back and forth through his hair, eyes cast downward as if he couldn’t bear to even look at them, and Mira felt slightly affronted at that fact. “My luck I get stuck with this today of all days. What do you want?”

“We’re looking for Vallian,” Mira said simply. “Know where he is?”

The man nodded, still keeping his gaze firmly on the carpet. “You’re looking at him. What do you want—?”

Something clattered further in the library’s lobby. All three turned to face the sound.

“Val!” shrieked another voice, high-pitched and staggeringly young. “Val! You have people! There’s people!”

Mira watched some kind of life return in Vallian’s posture. He stood up a bit straighter, rounded the edge of the desk and, as quickly as she saw fear flicker in his eyes, he bounded forward to catch the incoming torpedo that was a small girl. Vallian lifted the child with ease; her legs kicked wildly behind her as Vallian struggled to keep a hold on the girl’s waist, arms held straight in front of her, a veil of black hair dangling in front of her face. One of her tiny hands had closed around a white, floral headband, while the other opened and closed as if she were trying to grab at Mira’s jacket from a distance. “Put me down!” she cried. “Val, stop!”

“I will,” Vallian said, “when you calm down.”

“I’ll tell! I’m gonna tell!”

“A good try, but we both know your aunt would agree with me, Delilah. When you can promise me that you won’t tackle the guests, then I will put you down.” The child—Delilah—tossed the headband onto the floor as Vallian positioned her just above his hip. Delilah wrapped her arms around Vallian’s neck, her legs around his waist, dug her face into his shoulder, and whined. “Ignore her,” he went on, unfazed by the intensity of the girl’s complaints. “She didn’t sleep much, so she’s a little hyperactive.”

Magic scoffed and Mira didn’t miss the side glance he gave in her direction as if to remind her silently about all of the hell she’d given him growing up with her own hyperactive and spontaneous ideas that could have been much better planned. He didn’t have to say anything. It was all in his eyes. And Mira rolled her own with a smile.

She tapped on the desk. “We were hoping to see if we could speak with Jovie. There’s something important we needed to ask her.”

The hard frown on Vallian’s face came back. “Define important. If it isn’t dire, then I can’t help you.”

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“Daphne sent us,” Magic interjected. “Gave us a letter to pass on to you.” Mira could tell he was trying to sound confident, but he was talking too fast, moving a little too quickly. Even his hands shook as he handed over the tiny piece of concealed parchment and the librarian’s commanding stare was not helping this situation one bit.

Vallian scanned the document, clumsily held in the hand closest to the child who had gone uncharacteristically silent, while occasionally looking the two of them up and down. In the quiet, Mira thought the girl was asleep until she spotted Delilah move around. Maybe she was trying to, but the energy wasn’t disappearing as quickly as she hoped.

“No,” Vallian finally said, folding the paper and handing it back with such dismissal that Mira had to restrain the urge to fight back. Verbally or physically—she held off on thoughts of the latter for the child’s sake. “I can’t do anything for you.”

“Alaric also gave his regards,” Mira added quickly as if that last bit of saving grace would do something. “Wanted us to pass that message along with the goats he allowed us to borrow.”

But Vallian wouldn’t budge. He waved the paper towards her and went on speaking as though Mira hadn’t spoken anything in the last few seconds. “Alaric can say what he wants—in fact, he still owes me money from the last thing I sent him. Haven’t gotten paid from him in years, but that isn’t the point. The point is, I can’t do anything for you. Neither can Jovie. So if you could kindly see yourselves out—”

“What makes you certain? What makes you so sure that there’s nothing that can be done?”

“I can see,” said Vallian flatly, as if he’d had this kind of argument before. “With startling clarity contrary to what my eyes look like. You don’t have it. I would’ve sensed something by now.”

But Alaric did—if one could even count an assumption as the closest thing to a fact. Spiros did. The half-sights who gave her the time of day did, so why was this any different? “But—”

“If you had any kind of Sight,” the librarian went on, his eyes briefly squeezed shut as if the conversation had given him a migraine, “your eye would look different. Trick of the light, that’s all. I don’t see why the Cardinals would want someone like you when there’s plenty of other people that they’re after. I don’t think that’s the issue here.” Vallian set Delilah on the edge of the desk; the girl raised her arms over her head in the most exaggerated and fake stretch Mira had ever seen and it would have made her laugh if not for her rising temper.

To her surprise, Magic cleared his throat. “That doesn’t change what happened in Elnoire,” he mumbled, hands in his pockets. “It doesn’t change that we came here looking for answers.”

“And I can’t give you any.” Vallian rubbed at his face, digging the pads of his thumbs into his eyes, rubbing them as if he had any right to be aggravated. “If the Cardinals were after you, then they probably got you mixed up with another person. So, now that we’ve covered the fact that this doesn’t concern you, you can start making your way out. I don’t need a couple of dusters telling me what is and isn’t factual.”

Mira saw her brother flinch from the corner of her eye, watching him take two hesitant steps back. He looked like he was trying to disappear inside that baggy jacket of his and she couldn’t help her anger anymore.

Her hand flew onto the desk, the sharp slap of flesh against the wood echoing throughout the library. With how quickly Vallian stood at attention, strange eyes wide and watchful, she may as well have slapped him. He looked struck, like he wasn’t expecting to be challenged. Good. At least now he knew she meant business.

“I wouldn’t have marched my ass through that haunted forest and risked being drowned to death with the words of a demonic horse in my head to get here if it ‘didn’t concern me,’ ” Mira snarled, leaning forward just enough so that she didn’t have to raise her voice for Vallian to hear her. “So I would appreciate it if you didn’t make assumptions. That, and you should watch your mouth talking like that in front of a child.”

The librarian squared his shoulders as he moved back and took a deep breath in through his nose. There was a sharp glint in his eyes that reeked of spite and Mira didn’t know if he was going to double down or just continue to stare at her like one would do at smeared crap on the bottom of a shoe.

Beside him, Delilah had pulled her legs up to rest her feet on the edge of the desk, hiding a mischievous grin behind her knees, unable to contain her wild giggles. Vallian’s gaze swapped over to the girl, a kind of scolding look that Mira remembered her own father giving her whenever she misbehaved as a young girl.

But Delilah, with her hands up and her eyes (which Mira realized were both green) sparkling with unbridled energy, tipped her head towards her caretaker and said, “Jovie would like her.”

Val rolled his eyes. Mira had to wonder what was going on in the librarian’s head for him to be so riled and irritated. “Del,” he said, “do you want to do me a favor?” The girl perked up, her arms raised above her head. Delilah’s eyes were sparkling with an intensity that melted the librarian’s frosty nature. He scribbled onto a note and then handed it to the girl. “Can you go into the back section and find these two? They should be at your eye level. I think Miss Joanie gave them back to you today and we put them with the returned books.”

“The lady with the bat in her purse?” Delila asked, propelling herself off the desk. She stumbled a little in Magic’s general direction; he held out a hand to keep her from falling face first onto the carpet, then returned it to his pocket.

“Yes, the lady with the fruit bat. Go get those for me, please.”

Delilah didn’t need to be told to leave. She was already stampeding through the room before Vallian finished his instructions, but once she was out of earshot, his frown and unimpressed glower returned. “When Delilah gets back with the two specific things I asked of her,” he said, “I want you to take a look at them.”

“What will that do for us?” Mira asked, taking a few steps away from the desk to stand beside her brother. He shuffled a little on his feet, back and forth as if he were trying to figure out if he wanted space or the reassurance of her company.

“Give you more information,” said Vallian, as if the answer itself were an obvious thing. She’d only known the man for less than an hour and she hated him and his condescending tone. “I won’t stand here and give you two a lecture. That isn’t my job. My job is to assess information and the specific texts I’ll be leaving you with are firsthand journal accounts from other Scepters and half-sights. If those strike any chords, you’re welcome to come back. Tomorrow.”

“But—”

“Don’t. Jovie isn’t here today, anyway. She’s busy doing something else and I don’t want to take her away from her work when I know for a fact that there’s nothing for her to involve herself in.”

Mira heard Delilah before she saw her, the soft pounding of shoes on the plush carpet. She waddled towards them, the two books bigger than the width of her face but not nearly as thick, which enabled Delilah to wrap her tiny fingers around both of them stacked on top of each other. Running blind (for some reason, the girl decided to come back with the books in front of her face rather than directly out in front of her), Delilah sped down the carpet until she ran right into Magic’s side.

Vallian winced and Mira felt her entire body go on high alert as Magic recoiled with a startled shout, his arms defensively raised as though to shield himself. Mira took Delilah by the shoulders and moved her away to give her brother space, as he removed himself from the main part of the front lobby and leaned gently against a bookshelf, legs crossed at the ankles, arms crossed in front of his chest. His glasses tipped down as he tucked his chin to his chest, shoulders rising and falling in time with deep breaths. Mira saw the tremor in his hands as he fumbled with placing them inside the jacket sleeves of the opposite arm.

For once, she couldn’t exactly blame Magic for being too overly stimulated. She felt like she was going to lose her mind being here.

Delilah lowered the books from her face, holding them so that the top of the journals were just in front of her chin. Her eyes, bright green and shimmering, were wide and there was a distinct pout on her face as though she’d just been scolded. “Did I do something?” the child asked.

“No,” Mira said, crouching to be at eye level with Delilah, who didn’t look convinced. The upset furrow between her brows pinched Mira’s heart. “You didn’t do anything. Don’t worry about my brother. He just gets a little … overwhelmed. I don’t think he was expecting you to run into him and he’s not a big fan of the mountains, either. Not your fault.”

Still, the girl frowned, her eyes focused on something just off to Mira’s left as though she’d zoned out and Mira didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She almost looked at Vallian for some kind of advice, but before she could do any of that, Delilah hugged the journals against her chest and bolted off again, this time, towards Magic. Mira heard Vallian move, spotting him at the edge of the desk now instead of behind it, but she held a hand out for him to wait.

Delilah slowed her pace this time and, while Mira couldn’t hear the child speak, she watched Delilah hold out the books to Magic like some kind of olive branch. An apology for running straight into him.

Now it made sense; the girl hadn’t been upset because she did something wrong—Mira had reassured her of that. Delilah was upset because she’d made someone else upset. And, to Mira’s relief, Magic took the books slowly from her, tucked them under his arm and slowly, tentatively, gave the girl two mechanical-looking pats on the top of her head before waving her off in the direction of Mira and Vallian, who sighed deeply with relief as Delilah ran back over and hugged him, her arms barely enough to wrap around Vallian’s waist.

“Well,” said the librarian, “now that we’ve got that settled, I want you to look through those accounts. See what you can find as being similar to yours—if any. Then come back.”

“Where do you expect us to stay?” Mira asked, the challenge in the words clear. They could go all the way back to Alaric’s house, but the travel distance wouldn’t be worth it to go there and back.

“Don’t worry about that. I know someone who can waive a few fees for you at one of the inns here. It’s not that far, maybe about a ten minute walk on foot. Large, four story building made of light purple clay. You won’t be able to miss it. Now, get going. I got things to take care of.”

Mira didn’t waste any more time than that. She made a small whistle to get Magic’s attention and, while he didn’t look up at her, he did follow, but he said nothing about the books under his arm. Didn’t ask any questions. Didn’t make any commentary about how rude or irritating the whole ordeal was. His gait was stiff, his gaze fixated on the floor, and Mira knew immediately that Magic wasn’t all there. Even when they got back to the goats (Mira praised Jeralt endlessly for waiting), his first instinct wasn’t to put the journals away; he reached for Bjorn’s fur, jumping a little at the rustling of papers as he climbed to sit on the saddle and run his fingers through the animal’s fur.

And leave streaks of blood throughout.

Mira patted Jeralt’s horns before picking up the books and placing them in Bjorn’s satchel, rummaging around for some of the other supplies they’d been given from the Southern District. She moved around the goat’s pellet treats, some bags filled with energy roots for the two of them and a few little vials of the dirt water before she found the gauze wrappings.

She pried her brother’s hands away from the goat. How she didn’t smell the blood from inside the library, Mira didn’t know. His hands were covered in the stuff, parts of it dried beneath his nails. Magic had likely been at this for a while for there to be as much blood as there was.

Then she remembered he’d kept his hands in pockets from the moment Vallian had insulted them, dismissing them with one of the lowest insults a Droidellan could manage. Magic had been fighting off every emotion possible since then. She held out the first aid materials to him, waving them up and down in front of his face. “Wrap your hands.”

Magic didn’t move and his hands sought Bjorn’s fur again. This time, Mira let him, staying silent and attentive until she watched the tension in shoulders, hands and face peter out, the slow but steady change in his posture as he slumped a little forward to embrace the goat. He buried his face in the animal’s fur and took a single deep breath. “She befriended farmers mostly.”

Mira squinted. “Huh?”

“Most of the people she answered were farmers of the west who told the tales between generations. They didn’t start writing them down until several years after when a lot of the farmers’ kids were taught to write.”

A story, she realized. He’s telling a story. “Keep going, Mags.”

“The legends said that her involvement was why a lot of the farmers made it out of one of the biggest depressions in history. She gave them the funds they needed to survive. Helped them with their debts. Answered their wishes. She started dropping her stars earlier, too, to give the people a sign of her existence. That’s why we have shooting stars.”

Magic took another deep breath, his hold on the goat loosening. He tipped his head up, resting his chin on the back of Bjorn’s head. “Sorry,” he mumbled, glasses sliding towards his forehead. “Needed a minute.”

“Fine by me if it brings you back to the present,” Mira replied. She pushed the first aid in his direction and he didn’t deny the help this time. He took the materials and began wrapping his hands. “You okay?”

Magic nodded. The two of them sat there in silence for a while; Mira waited for her brother to finish tending to his self-inflicted wounds, leaning against Bjorn’s side—Jeralt gave disapproving huffs in the background—and rolling a pebble beneath her shoe to weed out the discomfort that bubbled in her chest, the annoyance that mingled with fear and rage and immense disappointment.

That was the worst part, being let down. She’d gotten so used to the kindness of strangers that she’d nearly forgotten that the Subsidians didn’t owe her anything. They didn’t owe her an explanation or a reason or even the time of day.

But other people saw something …

“Fuck them.”

Mira looked up at her brother, who was placing what remained of the gauze into his goat’s satchel. “Huh?”

“Fuck them,” he said, a little louder this time, adjusting the glasses on his nose. He was sitting facing her now, legs dangling from the side of the saddle. “If they won’t do anything to help us aside from give us … these”—Magic took the journals into his hand which were previously propped against the back of Bjorn’s neck—“then we’ll just do it ourselves.”

“And how do we do that, Mags?” asked Mira, gazing up at her brother as she slumped against Bjorn more. “It isn’t like we know a lot about this shit to begin with.”

Surprisingly, Magic smiled, that kid-like smile that reminded her of when he was young. The same smile she saw him make when they found the ginkgo tree in the center of the Maidenwoods. The boyish smile that accompanied the small sway of his feet, showed the smallest bits of his teeth. “I might be able to piece together a thing or two with the new stuff.”