Getting back into the Cathedral was no more difficult than getting into it in the first place had been; in fact, it was a far simpler matter. I knew where I was going and where to get the robes I needed to walk around without drawing suspicion, and the golden Archivist’s medallion hanging from my neck kept anyone who might be curious from stopping and asking questions. The only real issue that I had was Renica’s insistence on joining me.

“You can’t go alone, Ionat,” she told me firmly once we were back in our room. “What if you’re caught?”

“If I’m caught, it’ll be easier for me to escape by myself than for both of us to get away,” I shook my head.

“But if I’m there, watching your back, I can warn you so that you don’t get caught in the first place.”

I sighed. “Renica, I don’t even know if the medallion will let both of us into the Archive. There’s a good chance that you can’t get in no matter what.”

She bit her lip and looked down toward her feet. “I don’t want to stay behind again,” she said quietly. “Ionat, after Borava, and with the Sorvaraji abandoning us to stay in Panja–you’re the only person left that I know. I’m afraid that if you go, I’ll be trapped in this city by myself. When you went last time, I was terrified the whole time because I didn’t know what was happening. Please–I just need to be part of it, not stuck back here waiting.”

I looked at the woman, seeing the unshed tears brimming in her eyes. Her entire body was tense, radiating distress. A flash of brown energy moved from her to Vikarik, and the cairnik padded over to her, licking her hand and nuzzling against her reassuringly. I sighed; if I left her in the room, freaked out the whole time, Vikarik might respond badly. I didn’t need the canine trashing the inn because Renica was having a panic attack.

“You know that Vikarik can’t come,” I pointed out, trying one last tack. “She’s the only tame cairnik anyone’s ever seen so far; she’ll draw way too much attention.”

To my surprise, Renica nodded slowly and pointed to Melania and Ferka, curled up on one of the beds, snuggled against one another and fast asleep. “She can stay here and watch the children while we’re gone to make sure they don’t get into trouble. She’ll be fine for a bit without me.”

I rubbed my eyes with my fingers. I could think of several reasons why this was a bad idea, but all of them boiled down to, “Renica will make doing this harder.” The counter argument, essentially, was, “Leaving Renica will hurt her.” The real question was, which of those arguments held more weight for me? For the former me, the Faceless Man, there would have been no question. I’d have left Renica behind in a heartbeat, tied to the bed if necessary. Her feelings wouldn’t have mattered; only the success of the mission was important. Honestly, that was probably the smartest and most practical choice, and I could do it if I wanted to.

However, Renica was already broken, emotionally. I knew how much the loss of Borava still hurt her, but I hadn’t realized how she felt about Viora staying in Panja. I didn’t feel like the Sorvaraji abandoned us, but I could see why Renica did. Viora had chosen repairing her relationship with her church over staying with Renica, the last surviving member of her village. After losing the village, it was no wonder that Renica saw Viora’s staying behind as deserting her. If I went and left her behind, would she think that I was abandoning her, too? That I was saying she wasn’t good enough or important enough to bring along? The old me wouldn’t have cared if she did, but the new me…

Which was why Renica walked along beside me in a slightly rumpled, stained acolyte’s robe, the only one we could find that fit her and wasn’t too disgusting for her to wear. The disgruntled expression on her face reflected in her tone as she muttered beneath her breath as we walked.

“Can’t believe I have to be a stupid acolyte. First, I was his servant, now I’m an acolyte and he’s a Razvaraji. It’s so unfair.”

“People are looking at you,” I said to her softly as she received yet another curious and slightly disapproving look from an older Sorvaraji passing by. The old man shook his head, and I could almost hear him thinking, “In my day, acolytes were seen and not heard…”

“What?” she half-snapped.

I halted and took her arm, pulling her to a stop. “You need to stop now, or you need to go back,” I said bluntly. “You’re not acting the way an acolyte would, and it’s drawing attention.”

She blinked in surprise, then blushed slightly. “Sorry,” she said a bit shortly. “I–I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ll do better.” She plastered a smile on her face that was obviously fake, but I was fine with that. I guessed that at least half the acolytes in this place wore fake smiles most of the time.

“Better,” I nodded. “I’ll nudge you if you start slipping.”

I had to nudge her twice as we made our way through the passages toward the Archives, but each time, she quickly plastered a smile and respectful expression back on her face. Finally, we reached the hallway leading to the Archives, and I saw the first red, glowing tripwire pulsing through the air above the floor. I stopped and took a deep breath.

“I don’t know if this is going to work,” I reminded her. “If it does, I don’t know if you’ll be able to follow me. If I tell you to stop, freeze and don’t move, okay? And if I tell you to run, run!”

She bit her lip, her eyes flashing angrily, then nodded her head. I turned away from her and walked toward the first alarm, my head high and my stride confident. As I approached, the line seemed to glow brighter, more angrily, and I forced myself not to tense to run. I had no idea if there were more mundane watchers nearby who might raise an alarm. My visit earlier suggested there weren’t, but I might also have gotten lucky. I wasn’t going to tempt fate if I could help it.

As my foot touched the pulsing line of power, I felt its warmth flow into me. Energy ran up my leg and along my body, crawling up my skin. When it reached the medallion I wore, though, the golden disc pulsed a dim, white radiance that touched the reddish power and seemed to diffuse it, turning it into a golden mist that hovered in the air, no longer a coherent beam. I stepped back quickly and watched; the mist hung in the air for a moment before snapping back down into the beam, flowing without interruption.

“Got it,” Sara said happily in my thoughts.

“Got what?”

“How it works. That strand of raju is seriously unbalanced, mostly heat and little light, just at the edge of collapsing. That’s why touching it would disrupt it; you’d either add some heat to it or draw the little bit of light out of it, and it would shatter. The medallion contains the opposite; it’s lots of light and very little heat in exactly the inverse proportions. When they combine, it balances the raju, letting you pass through without disrupting it.”

“So, could Renica pass through, as well?”

“Probably, but if the medallion won’t let her, you could do it yourself. Like this.” An image formed in my mind of a cold, almost frigid light, one that felt seriously unbalanced and ready to dissipate. “That light will counter the alarms–at least, the ones here in the hallway. There might be other wards inside that are different, and I can’t say anything about those.”

“Renica, come here for a second,” I instructed.

The woman gave me a slightly hard look but walked forward. As she drew close, I took her wrist and turned her hand to face palm-up. I concentrated, picturing the image that Sara had given me. She coached me through it, and I shifted the light slightly warmer or colder until she judged it exactly correct. It felt wrong, and my instincts screamed at me to add more heat and some stabilizing lunar raju, but I ignored them. I wasn’t trying to create a perfectly balanced spell; I was trying to make a key, and keys rarely looked even and symmetrical.

Renica’s eyes widened as a ball of light shimmered into being on her hand. “That’s cold,” she complained.

“It’s also the key to getting through the passage’s wards,” I said somewhat icily myself. “If you want to come with me, you’ll need to carry that just in case my medallion doesn’t cover both of us.”

“How do you know that?” she asked suspiciously. “You said you didn’t know how to get through the wards before.”

“Once I saw it in action, I figured it out,” I replied, glancing around meaningfully. “And you’re not being a very good acolyte again.”

She bit her lip, plastered the smile on her face, and lowered her head. Her eyes, though, still blazed. I didn’t know why she was so upset, but I admitted it was starting to annoy me.

I set aside my irritation and led her forward through the wards. I was glad that I’d given her the light; she followed behind me, but the second ward snapped back into place the moment I stepped through it. Fortunately, as it touched the glowing orb in her hand, it expanded again into the golden mist, allowing her to pass–and dimming her light somewhat as it drained energy off. I replenished it and led her forward, passing through several wards and rounding the corner toward the Archives. I went first to be sure no one would cry foul at seeing her holding the light in her hands; fortunately, as I’d seen before, the place was mostly empty. A pair of archivists stood in sight; both glanced up at me, then seeing the medallion on my chest, looked away immediately.

I stepped back and told Renica to keep her hand behind her back to conceal the glowing light, then led the girl around the corner. One of the archivists glanced up at us and frowned as he saw Renica in her acolyte robes. After a moment, he shrugged and looked down; I hoped that he assumed that if she’d gotten through the wards, she was meant to be in the Archive.

I wanted to stop inside and look around, but the presence of the two archivists made that impossible. Instead, I picked a random direction and marched off confidently with Renica following behind. Rows of books towered above me, and I let my eyes sweep over them so that Sara could get a glimpse of them.

“These seem like pretty normal books, John,” she told me. “Spell primers, treatises on the Sun and moons, memoirs of former Pretmarajis, that sort of thing. There’s nothing here that’s out of the ordinary.”

“Unless the covers are fake,” I pointed out. “There could be other things hidden inside them.”

“If that’s the case, we’ll never find anything without some sort of reference catalog. There’s an easy way to find out, though. Just grab a book.”

I stopped and pulled a random book from the shelf. As I reached for it, I felt another surge of dark red energy rush up my arm into my medallion. The medallion pulsed once, and the energy shifted into golden mist as I slid the book free and glanced at the spine.

“Musings on the moon-cursed?” Renica murmured quietly. “Why are you interested in that?”

“I’m not,” I said, opening the book and looking at the first page. That basically seemed to be the author bragging about their encounters with the moon-cursed and why they should be considered the ultimate expert on the subject. I snapped the book closed with a grimace and slid it back into place.

“So much for that idea,” I thought with a sigh.

“You could still be right, but it might be that only some books have false covers. Again, some sort of map or reference catalog would help, and there almost has to be one. There’s no way that the people here have memorized this entire library. They have to have a system for locating books.”

“Even if we find it, how will we know what we’re looking for?” I asked, refraining from shaking my head. “I doubt there’ll be a section marked, ‘Forbidden Imperial Magic’.”

She laughed quietly. “No, probably not, but they might have a restricted section. That could be a start.”

I took a step, then stopped. Just walking around, looking for a catalog or restricted area wasn’t going to help. The book I’d taken from the Lomoraji archivist was a forbidden one, as far as I could tell. That meant it wouldn’t just be out where anyone could find it. If it had been, the Lomoraji wouldn’t have needed to take it. He could have sat down and openly made a copy of it, and no one would have said a word.

It could have been in a restricted section, as well, but that didn’t make much sense to me, either. Restricted sections required trust; everyone knew about the restricted section, of course, so the archivists would have to trust one another not to go into it. It might be warded and guarded, of course, but wards could be broken or circumvented, and guards could be bribed or removed. I was certain there were restricted books down here, but I guessed that they weren’t forbidden, just ones that it was a good idea to limit access to, like unpleasant but true histories or heretical writings. It wouldn’t include books that you absolutely didn’t want anyone but a select few getting their hands on because it might destabilize your entire society. That meant that the book had probably been hidden, and I had to find it.

“What are you doing?” Renica asked, her voice quiet but clearly annoyed. “Why are we just standing here?”

“I’m thinking,” I replied just as quietly. “I’m certain that there’s a hidden store of books around somewhere, and I’m trying to work out where it might be.”

“Why aren’t we looking for it, then?” she said sharply.

“Where?” I asked bluntly, glaring at her as my anger rose. “If it’s hidden, we aren’t just going to stumble over it, Renica.”

“We might…”

“No, we won’t. If we could, then the archivists here already would have, probably hundreds of times. People who hide things take precautions to make sure that no one finds it by randomly searching. They avoid obvious hiding places and anyplace that might get found by accidentally moving or cleaning something.”

“Then it’s probably locked away somewhere,” she replied, crossing her arms before her chest. “Maybe even buried underground. No one would find it, then.”

I shook my head. “It’s like your trap lines: it has to be accessible, at least somewhat. Whoever hid the books still wants to use them, or they’d have just destroyed them. That means that they can’t be behind a vault door or buried somewhere in here; people would notice those being accessed.”

I turned and looked around. “The secret to finding something that’s hidden,” I murmured, “is getting in the head of the person doing the hiding. If I were hiding the entrance to a section of the Archives, where would I put it?”

“Well, not anywhere around here,” Renica said, the irritation seeming to drop from her face momentarily. “If it’s a hidden entrance, you don’t want people to see you using it, or it won’t be hidden anymore. Anyone walking by could see you here. I’d put it way in the back somewhere where no one sees.”

I shook my head. “It won’t be down a dead-end hallway. Someone walking down a hallway with no exit and disappearing would draw as much attention as someone walking through a secret door. It’ll be in a pass-through area–but you’re right that it’ll be one that isn’t used much.” I nodded and began walking, and she followed behind me.

“You know where it is?” she asked curiously.

“No, but I know what we’re looking for, at least. A hallway far from the main area here that doesn’t get used much–maybe one with dust on the books, and preferably with an alcove or something so that someone could enter the hidden area without being seen by a casual person walking by.”

It took us twenty minutes of searching to find a place that matched the description. During that time, we wandered around, stopping occasionally and looking through books to make it look like we had a purpose. Renica grew steadily grouchier as we searched, and I had to nudge her more and more often to remind her to keep a smile on her face. Fortunately, the Archives were fairly empty, and we only encountered a half-dozen omeni during our wanderings.

I stopped as we entered the short passage, running my finger down a book’s spine and coming away with a layer of heavy dust. “This looks promising.” I glanced at the book’s title. “Meditations on geology,” I chuckled. “That sounds like something most people would avoid.”

“This one’s called, ‘Methods of Crystallography’,” Renica said sourly. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“Neither do I,” I admitted. “Except that it’s obviously about crystals. Looks like this is the rocks and minerals section.” We walked down the passage, and I glanced into a shallow alcove that led off to the left. I froze at once, staring at the wall.

“This is it,” I murmured.

“What?” she asked, her voice waspish again as she stared at the books. “It looks like another bookshelf to me.”

“It looks like it, but it’s not,” I shook my head, stepping into the alcove. To my magical sight, the wall before me glowed with the dull red of heat-based solar raju, far more than I’d seen in the wards before. The entire wall gave off a sense of danger, and I suspected that trying to breach those wards without the key would be painful if not deadly.

“I think you’re right, John,” Sara agreed. “These look similar to the wards outside, but their instability is different. I think if you set them off, they collapse into you, not into themselves.”

“There has to be a way, though,” I replied reasonably. “I mean, the Lomoraji got inside. If he did, it has to be possible.”

“Unless he slipped in when someone else left the door open.”

“Okay, that’s possible but unlikely. If people were leaving the door open, more archivists would be finding it, I imagine.” I touched my medallion. “It can’t be as simple as this letting you in, though. If it were, anyone who came to get a book from this shelf would trigger the door.”

“No, it has to be something else,” she agreed. “But I think you’re right. I think the Lomoraji had to have figured out a way inside.”

My eyes widened as an idea leaped into my head. “The Lomoraji,” I murmured.

“What?” Renica said, her voice brittle.

“The Lomoraji. This is the door, and he got through it somehow.” I reached out toward the wall, touching it not just with my hand–I wasn’t worried about setting it off since it had to be designed to let anyone touch the books without triggering it–but with my magical senses, as well. I could feel the construct hanging before me, and as I suspected, it was far more complex than I’d first thought. It lacked the golden power of light, of course, but other energies hung behind it, hidden by the veil of solar magic. Icy, white raju swirled in the spell, along with thick, crimson energy that I recognized from the attack on Panja Cathedral.

I pulled my hand back and looked at her. “Beast raju,” I said softly. “That’s why no one can open it. It takes solar and lunar raju together to do it. It must be designed to be opened by two people at once, one with solar raju and one with lunar.”

“Why would they do that?” she asked incredulously. “There are no Lomorajis in the Cathedral!”

“That we know of,” I shrugged. “Who knows what they might be hiding? They might keep a handful around for things like this.”

“So, open it up,” Renica gestured at the wall. “You can use both, right?”

“I can’t use beast raju, Renica,” I shrugged. “I haven’t figured it out yet. You can, though, and I can use light raju. Together…”

“No,” she said firmly, shaking her head and stepping back. “No, I won’t do it.”

“Renica, it might be the only way inside,” I said, somewhat exasperated. She’d complained the entire time about having to be a ‘useless acolyte’, and now that she could do something, she was refusing!

“I don’t care. I’m not doing it.”

“Why?” I demanded, taking a step toward her, my voice and face both reflecting my anger.

“I–I wouldn’t even know how,” she said, looking away from me and stepping back.

“You could do the same thing you do to Vikarik,” I told her. “Just reach out to the wall the way you do with her–I’ve seen you do it hundreds of times!”

“I…” She stopped retreating and wrapped her arms around her chest protectively. “I’m afraid, Ionat. I’m afraid of–of turning into someone like the Lomoraji. I’m afraid that if I start doing it, I’ll keep doing it, until I’m as insane as he was, living in the Darkwood Heart and killing every omeni who passes by.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to do it. Please.”

I stopped as her words sank in. It was a valid fear, really. So far, she’d only used her raju unknowingly, never on purpose. Once she used it deliberately, she’d know how it was done–and she’d be tempted to do it again. She’d use it to calm a wounded animal so she could put it out of its misery, or to convince a dangerous one to leave her alone so she didn’t have to kill it. Once she used it once, she could convince herself to use it again. Granted, it was the only way we could get into the hidden section, but we didn’t have to do it that day. We could leave, and I could come back once I’d worked out beast magic…

“There might be another way, John,” Sara said thoughtfully.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you thought that to get in, the Cathedral has to have some Lomorajis around, but that might not be the case. From what you sensed of the ward, the damaging part is all solar raju; the lunar raju is just part of the key.”

“And?”

“And you saw that the Vanatori basically shrug off solar raju. A Vanator could open it without danger, I think. You might be right that two people are needed to open it: a Sorvaraji to trigger it with light raju and a Vanator to take the backlash when that happens.”

“I doubt that there’s a Vanator walking around here who’s willing to open this for us, Sara,” I pointed out sarcastically, then immediately felt guilty. I was unhappy with Renica, not Sara. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine, John. However, your hatchet might serve the same purpose as a Vanator. If you trigger the ward with a burst of solar raju that’s pure light, you could try to catch or divert the collapse with your hatchet.”

I reached under my robe and pulled the hatchet out, shifting it to its golost form. The blade shimmered, and whorls and swirling shapes appeared in the metal, seeming to form a pattern I felt I could almost understand but that I guessed was actually totally random.

“What are you doing, Ionat?” Renica asked nervously. “Look, I don’t want to do this…”

“Hopefully, you won’t have to,” I smiled at her as reassuringly as I could. “I’ll still need your help, though.”

“How? I can’t use raju…”

“That light I gave you?” I interrupted her. “When I tell you to, I want you to touch it to the bookshelf in front of us, then step back behind me as quickly as you can.” As I spoke, I cast my Twilight Shield spell, forging a shimmering disc of barely visibly glowing light three feet across between me and the ward. I doubted that my hatchet would catch the entire ward or that my shield would block the entirety of the backlash, but hopefully, between the two, they’d keep me from dying, at least.

Renica stepped nervously forward, glancing back at me, then lifted the hand that still concealed the dim ball of light. I watched with my magical sight as she touched it to the bookshelf–and the light vanished, sucked into the ward. She stepped quickly back as the light raju plunged into the ward.

Magical energy coursed down through the spell-form, carried by links of lunar raju, until it seemed to hit a void in the spell. The power hesitated for an instant before recoiling from that place where I assumed beast raju was supposed to go, rushing back up through the spell, drawing energy from it as it flowed. The tiny light burst forth as a lance of golden fire that slammed into my shield and shattered it, sending the pieces shivering around as the spell unraveled. The rest of the fire poured forth to wash over me, but the hatchet in my hand seemed to shiver and tremble as the energy neared it. The flames twisted in midair, diverted upward into the hatchet, which sucked them inside like a dry sponge. A moment later, the flames died away, leaving the ward still present but only faintly glowing as it drained itself of power.

I reached out a hand and touched the bookshelf; to my surprise, it slid forward, and the ward faded into a cloud of reddish energy that still hung in the air around us. The wall swung noiselessly open, revealing a dark room beyond it. My stomach lurched as I looked at that room and Sense Imbalance triggered a wave of nausea in my stomach. I hesitated for only a minute before stepping inside the darkened room to see what secrets waited within.