While Lillith was demonstrating her rather unique abilities to the world, Willam and Elayna sat alone in the library, a rather plain structure occupying one corner of the walled-in courtyard. With no distinguishing features, smallish windows, and a lack of any markings that indicated what was inside, the building gave off the impression that it, much like those attending the school, spent its time trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. This would be reasonable for a school library to do. It is common knowledge that students are the natural enemies of books, whose margins call to have selections from the human anatomy crudely scribbled therein.

The pair were seated behind a small fortress of Kelsai Academy record books haphazardly constructed on their table. As students who had stayed on during the summer term, they were not required to be at the meet and greet so long as they showed up for orientation that night. Elayna had decided to use this time before they were expected to continue the research quest, which had consumed her every waking moment for the past week. Willam, fully aware that her boyfriend would be somewhere on the Convoy, was simply tailing behind her wherever she went, enjoying his last few days of spending time with her openly.

"Oh, this is interesting," she began, using a bit of yarn to mark another page in a book of assassin records from five years ago to the present. Unlike her peers, Elayna handled each sheet of parchment as though the book were a reliquary. "Did you know that he..."

Willam found himself unable to pay attention to what she was saying. It wasn't that he had no interest in the subject matter, but in his present state of mind, he was much more inclined to observe how the light coming in through the diminutive windows played off the curls in Elayna's hair and brought out the red highlights. He had it bad and was loving every second of it while it wouldn't get him ground into a bloody pulp.

"Willam!"

The boy jumped and looked around guiltily.

"Er...sorry, I didn't catch that last part."

Elayna sighed. "I was pointing out an interesting pattern in Albanos's recorded sightings and activities in the past few years. I think I'm beginning to get an inkling of what's happening here."

"Why are we even researching this? We're not assassins, and we wouldn't be allowed to kill him anymore, even if we were."

"Well, I'm certainly not going to attend a school he's leading without knowing a little more about him, and he doesn't strike me as the kind of person who'll just give you a straight answer about much, either. He's too much of a wise-ass. When dealing with him, we must arm ourselves with prior knowledge, or we'll never get anywhere."

"I may never get anywhere anyway. For all I know, he's just biding his time before he offs me for that knife incident in his old room."

"Honestly, Willam, if he wanted you dead, you would already be dead. That part of his behavior doesn't take much interpretation, at least. The records show he's very cut and dry on that sort of thing." She saw him go pale again. "No pun intended, of course."

"Sure. Um...Elayna, about Bruno, I--"

She slammed the book shut. "Look, we've made it through nearly two years of sneaking around behind his back, and we'll make it through another one. I know it's not the best or even much of a solution at all, but given the circumstances, it's the best we can do, right?"

Elayna trailed off as the ever-present hurt puppy dog look in Willam's eyes became more pronounced, even by his standards.

"Elayna, is there ever going to be a solution?"

"Gods, Willam. Of course there is, but--"

The door to the library was flung open hard enough to bounce it forcibly against the stone of the adjacent wall. Albanos' now familiar voice preceded him as he stormed into the room, Elwhite and Billicks trailing behind him at a near run.

"What do you MEAN we don't have any records on her?!"

The librarian shushed him from behind her desk, neither knowing nor caring who he was. Nearly all librarians feel that the rules among the stacks, especially that of silence being golden, transcend many of the trivial things that might have meaning in the outside world, reputation among them. They are, by and large, right.

In their natural environment, librarians wield the terrible power of being the only people who know how to find the perfect things, secret stashes of knowledge, almost mystical in their obfuscation from mortal eyes. For that, no one in their right mind or with any conceivable future research needs deigned to mess with them. Her scowl caused Albanos to lower his voice to a near whisper.

"Why do we not have records on a student like that? That's inconceivable!" Billicks opened his mouth to answer but then noticed the haphazard wall of books in the corner and the soft shushing from the other side.

"Sir, perhaps this is not the best place to discuss this?" He nodded meaningfully in its direction.

Albanos strode over to them unperturbed, peered around the barricade, took brief stock of the scene, and addressed Elayna.

"Fuzzy bunny rabbits?"

Elayna smiled innocently. "No, sir, only some light research to prepare for the new school year."

Albanos' eyes ran over the spines of the books on the table, and his brain made a mental note for later. "Good, this is a horrible place for the former; I suspect the librarian would be quite displeased. Right then, you're dismissed. There's something we need to attend to."

The two scurried off, hurriedly lugging the piles of record books they had been surrounded by to their proper shelves like an academic ant line under the librarian's watchful eye. When they had gone, Billicks turned to Albanos once more.

"The fact of the matter, sir, is that she won't let us."

"Won't let you? You're the faculty! The students don't get to dictate whether they'd like to have a permanent record! What's next? 'I say, I'd rather not have a D in this class. Could you give me an A instead? There's a good chap.'"

"Oh, she presumably has a record somewhere, quite a few of them, I'd imagine. It's just that we don't know where they are. We put things in her folder, and they disappear like clockwork."

"I thought the records were kept in the locked and trapped filing cabinet in the locked and trapped bursar's office at the end of the very, very heavily trapped, restricted access hallway. I wasn't even daft enough to make a run at those! It's suicide without all the proper keys and step sequences. I remember the yearly demonstration of rolling a watermelon down the corridor..."

All three adults shuddered at the collective annual memory of what those poor fruits had endured.

"Regardless," Billicks pressed on, "they always disappear. We even posted guards once or twice, but they always end up falling asleep, typically with some assistance, and by the time we come to check on them in the morning, the folder's been pilfered. We made backup copies and hid them in our rooms once. Even those were gone within a few days, along with various souvenirs."

"What year is she?"

"She's been here for three years, sir." Billicks hoped the diplomatically worded answer would slip by Albanos, but the deepening lines on the man's forehead suggested he had not been so lucky.

"Assassin or thief?" Billicks and Elwhite began fidgeting simultaneously.

"Is she an assassin...or a thief?"

"Assassin," said Billicks.

"Thief," said Elwhite at precisely the exact moment.

"Yes, a thief!" responded Billicks.

"Right, an assassin!" chimed in Elwhite, a second behind Billicks.

Albanos began rubbing his temples. This had not been a good day, and it wasn't even night yet. "You don't know what school she belongs to?"

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Elwhite stepped in to relieve the visibly shaken Billicks. "It's just that she won't declare one, you see."

"Well, which classes is she taking? There's got to be a bias in her coursework. Or does she not tell you what classes she's in, either?"

"She takes all of them."

"All of which?"

"All of them. Look, the average student has to take five or six classes a semester to finish their schooling in the normal four years, and even that tends to drive them slightly mad around finals, right?"

"Yes...I remember finals time. Do we still confiscate all daggers and poisons the week beforehand?"

"Oh gods, yes," chorused both Billicks and Elwhite. Another harsh lesson the Academies had learned early on was that the stress of exams, the presence of deadly weapons, and a living situation that required you to have a roommate—perhaps one who snored—never ended well.

"With that in mind," proceeded Elwhite, "you'll be quite interested to hear that she's taking nine classes every first semester and ten every second."

"I thought you weren't allowed to sign up for more than seven due to the mortality rate?"

"Do you want to be the one to tell her she can't?"

"Perhaps. Her grades, does someone at least remember what she's getting in these classes? I imagine that kind of workload would pull down her overall performance."

He saw his two deans exchange a worried glance. Billicks tagged in.

"Sir, she's shattered nearly every academic and performance record in the school's books."

"...But I hold those records."

"Held them. You held them."

"They were perfect marks! I got perfect marks! How can you be better than perfect?!"

"By doing it faster. If it makes you feel any better, she will not let us write her name down over yours. I believe her exact words were, 'Let him keep his damn records.'"

Albanos gave them both a bewildered stare, not entirely certain he was hearing all of this, then turned and walked back to the librarian's desk. She resumed scowling at him.

"Er...hello. I was wondering if there is a Book of Jobs and Deeds for a Lillith...um..." He turned back to his deans. "What's her last name?"

There was more fidgeting, more averting their gazes, and more sudden and intense interest in the floor and ceiling. Muttering a curse under his breath, he turned back to the Librarian.

She was holding a book out to him with the name "Lillith" written across the cover.

"Do not dog-ear the pages. Mind the spine. If you spill something on it, you have to scribe it over again. And no more swearing."

"How did you--"

"I don't question how you kill people. You don't question how I run the library."

"Well, it's good to see she hasn't managed to get a hold of this, at least."

"She tried. Once." The librarian emphasized the point with a menacing grin. "Return the book when you're done. Reference and record books are not to leave the premises. Good day." With that, she lost interest in even scowling at him and returned to the files she was updating.

Albanos flipped through the book, eventually giving a low whistle, which the librarian shushed without looking up.

"This is an awful lot of real-world work experience for someone just entering their third year as a student."

Billicks shrugged. "Employers know talent when they hear about it, and between their recommendations and the way the students talk about her when they go home, she's already got a sizeable reputation. Even a few nicknames already."

"Such as?"

"Mostly, they refer to her as 'Death's Shadow,' a remark on her ample work as both a thief and an assassin. It's a bit pretentious for my taste. A second-year named Whimsley got quite a laugh last year when he called her--" Billicks pulled up short as his mind caught up with his mouth.

"Called her what, Mr. Billicks?"

"Albanette, sir."

"How amusing," Albanos remarked in his most unamused voice.

"Many of us thought so, too, although we never did find all his teeth. Pity."

Albanos had seen and heard enough. Closing the book and setting it down on the desk with overly deliberate quietness and care, earning another scowl from the Librarian, he set off for the door. With a worried glance, Elwhite and Billicks set off after him.

"Where might I find this girl? I saw her slip back through the main gate while the crowd was dispersing, and we've got a good three hours before orientations start. Do you know where she might have been headed? She doesn't strike me as much the Staggering Shadow type."

"She likes to hang out in the Shadowgroves, sir."

Albanos froze, his right hand reflexively clenching.

"Not much of a chance she might be anywhere else?"

"As far as we can tell, when she's on campus, she's in her room, and when she's not, she's...out there."

Down the road, Ms. Elwhite would often think to herself how, in that moment, even from behind, Albanos looked his age for the first time since he had arrived. The proud bearing disappeared, his shoulders slumped with the strain of some unseen weight, and she could see his hands shaking ever so slightly at his sides.

It passed quickly and quietly, like a cloud across the moon. Still, she would often find herself returning to it in her mind whenever she needed reminding that, beyond all the reputation and deeds, accurate and apocryphal, he was just another person. He was much more heavily armed, perhaps, and trained to kill you with anything he could reach, but still a person. It was something of a peculiar comfort.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Fine, fine...just...got a few people out there, you know? But I guess we all do by this stage in the game. Doesn't make me special."

He turned back to them, and even Billicks tried to offer what he hoped was a sympathetic smile.

"I don't suppose either of you would have a cigarette on you?"

They shook their heads.

"Damn."

"No more swearing," the librarian called out from her desk, unphased.

"Oh well, nothing to be done for it now. I'll see you all at orientation. And I promise I'll be a good little boy and wear my special robes." He turned and headed out the door, leaving the deans standing alone, unsure what to do now but confident they wanted to give him a head start before they left the building.

"Wonder what that was all about," mused a perplexed-looking Billicks.

"I can only imagine one kind of thing getting a reaction like that out of a person like him," Elwhite replied with an almost wistful sigh. But I imagine you've probably led too stodgy a life to really understand."

With that, she left the building to prepare for the evening's festivities, leaving Billicks even more confused.

He turned to the librarian, hesitated briefly, then plowed ahead anyway. "Do you have any idea what she's talking about?"

"No asking the librarian stupid questions."

Billicks harumphed indignantly, dismissed the whole matter as " one of those things that probably isn't proper," and wandered off to find sensible people to talk to for a change.