Page 179 of Cast in Conflict

“Just don’t, all right?”

She turned a glare on him, and then reached out and grabbed a book—fingers on the top of the spine, not the edge of the binding. It felt like a book, albeit ragged at the top of the pages, and she pulled it off the shelf.

Mandoran looked unimpressed, not worried or concerned. He stopped breathing when she tried to open it—which was difficult to do with one free hand; he wasn’t offering help.

“The Arkon—the chancellor,” he corrected himself, “would reduce you to ash for the way you’re handling that book. You do not open a book by holding on to one of its covers and letting the rest dangle.”

“Yeah, well he’s not here. You’re going to report me?”

“It is entirely unnecessary,” a new voice said.

She fumbled to close the book—without dropping it—as she turned in the direction of the voice.

Mandoran, being as mature as ever, said, “I told you.”

In the bright light of this library was a spider. It was a giant spider, eyes evenly spaced across the large, central—and hairy—body from which legs or arms extended. The librarian was one of the Wevaran.

“Starrante?” she said, without much hope. All of the Wevaran she had met—and she had met very few—looked the same, to her.

The spider clicked. A lot. Kaylin tensed, readying herself to leap out of the way of the webbing that the Wevaran used as both weapon and escape.

The clicking, however, stopped. “Did you say Starrante?” the Wevaran said—in Barrani.

Kaylin, book now closed and carefully clutched to her chest—because librarians were unlikely to kill someone if their attack would also damage the books—nodded.

“Do I look like Starrante?”

She decided honesty was not the best policy. “There are similarities,” she finally said, “and I haven’t met many of your people.”

“I have met very few of yours—especially not here. In fact, now that I look at you both, I do not believe you have permission to be here.”

“Who would we get permission from?”

“That is the question,” the unnamed Wevaran replied.

“I’m Kaylin, and this is Mandoran. We didn’t mean to come here, but my friend kind of fell through the wall.”

“Wall?”

“Wall,” she replied firmly.

“I am Bakkon,” the Wevaran said. “You are both unusual. You should not be here,” he added, as he slowly approached. “But the book should be returned to its shelf. You will give it to me,” he added. “Your handling of something so precious is appalling.” His tone implied a growl of disapproval.

He approached; Kaylin forced herself to stand still, rather than to retreat. Every story she had ever told herself about spiders and poison reared its terrified head. But Starrante had saved Robin, and he was gentler in interaction than either the Dragon or the Ancestor who formed the other two points of the librarian triangle. She held the book out, trying to stop her arm from shaking.

It wasn’t that he could kill her—most of her friends could. But none of those friends invoked that visceral response. To part of her brain, the Wevaran were death; everything else about those friends was part of normal life.

Bakkon reached out with two limbs to take what she held out. His arms froze inches from the book. “What are the marks you bear?”

Since the marks were mostly hidden, Kaylin hesitated.

Mandoran, however, said, “She is Chosen. She bears the marks of the Chosen.”

“Impossible. She is mortal. Even I can taste that.”

“She is not—in this world—the only mortal to have borne those marks.”

“What has happened to the world while I’ve been sleeping?”

---