“I need to enter the library,” Saia told Serit once they were back from their lunch. “And you’re going to help me.”

They closed the door.

“I felt good for about ten minutes, of course it was only temporary.”

“There’s a secret staircase in the library. They won’t let me enter because I’m not a monk, but you can pretend to be a scholar of viss that wants to study their books.”

“I am a scholar of viss. The practical side of it, at least.”

“Good. I’ll be hiding inside your bag, so…”

“Wait. Which books do they have?”

Saia expanded her domain to read a couple of titles next to the secret doorway.

“I’m on board. Not that I had a choice, but I actually want to read that.”

Saia took out her sphere from her statue as they spoke. Serit reached out, but she retracted her hand. She couldn’t bring herself to give them her sphere. She just at that moment realized the amount of trust Zeles had put in her. She needed to ask for his forgiveness properly, as soon as she was home.

"Do you really think I would deactivate you?" Serit asked. "If you don't trust me, at least trust the fact that I don't want to be torn apart by Mayvaru."

Saia knew all of that, but it didn’t change anything.

"Open the bag," she said in the end.

Serit obeyed with a sharp tug at the strings that kept it closed. Saia made a step forward and dropped the sphere into the bag. She made her statue lay back on the bed under a mountain of bedcovers. It was excessive for a summer afternoon, but it was the only way to hide her lack of breathing.

She gave Serit directions by talking in their ears. When they knocked at the library’s door, it was the same monk who opened it.

"Only monks in the library," he said, but Saia slowed down the door with her winds so that he couldn't close it immediately.

"I know, but I thought you could make an exception for me,” Serit said. “I'm an engineer specialized in viss-propelled machines. I've studied at Iriméze, with the... Cloud people living there."

The monk stopped trying to close the door.

"Is that why you paint yourself like that?" he said, gesturing at his own eyes.

"Yes, as a disguise. I can share some of the patterns I've learned, if you let me in to consult..."

Saia told them the names of some books, and they repeated them with solemnity. The monk seemed to consider their words.

"Or maybe I could read them outside the library?" they suggested in the end.

"What?" Saia whispered.

"That's out of the question.” The monk glanced behind him. "We don't need patterns, we're forbidden by the families to practice magic again. Maybe you'd have more luck talking to them."

“I’ve tried, but they don't have the books I'm looking for."

The monk glanced again, then held up a finger.

"Just a moment."

Saia let him close the door. She observed him walking up to another monk reading at a table and exchanging a few words about cloud people. They both came back to the door. Saia already knew what they were about to say, but didn't tell Serit to keep their reaction genuine.

“Avuru is an expert on cloud people’s society,” the first monk said. “She’ll ask you some questions to verify whether you’re actually who you say you are.”

Serit nodded. Saia was the only one to know they were smiling wide, under their scarf.

“And,” the monk continued, “She’ll stay with you the entire time. We’ll write down your name and the books you’ll consult in our register and notify the abbot.”

Serit’s smile faltered, but they agreed.

Avuru stepped forward. She smiled and nodded as a greeting, a black strand of hair escaping her low ponytail to bounce against her cheek.

She started interrogating Serit on all the details about life above the clouds, from shilvé history to the mechanism behind the way their cities floated. Serit didn’t just answer her questions, but flaunted their knowledge so openly that Saia was always on the verge of telling them to at least feign a bit more uncertainty.

“I’m impressed,” Avuru said in the end. “It’s all correct, except for the fact that there’s no proof the shilvé were the ones to learn how to train sprites. It might have been humans, as far as we know, even if we lost that knowledge long ago.”

Serit’s smile dropped. They breathed in deeply, as if they were trying to push back some words they might regret.

“Think about the books,” Saia said in their ears.

They managed to stay quiet, and even give Avuru a very sharp nod. Their irritation disappeared when they stepped beyond the entrance and saw the library.

"So much paper," they whispered.

Avuru chuckled.

"You must be used to glass, right? We have some story-bottles. Not enough to learn much about shilvé society, though."

Serit followed her to the other side of the library.

"Why do you study them, if I may ask?”

"We might start a mission of conversion. Contrary to the people of the Golden Lands, they already worship ten gods, so it should be an easier task."

"Why would you want to do that?" Serit asked.

Avuru turned her head, surprised by their irritated tone.

"They deserve a chance to know the truth."

"The truth? What if what we believe in is the truth, have you considered that?"

"We?" Avuru asked, smiling. "So they've converted you as well."

"Please change topic," Saia told Serit.

"Yes," they said. "I've believed in them for most of my life, and so have the people at Iriméze. I don't know what you could possibly say that would make them change their mind."

"Lower your voice," Avuru whispered. "The shilvé gods are just a variant of the Arissian ones anyway. They simply came to associate the materials they couldn't find in their cities with each god during their piracy phase. For example, when they couldn’t steal enough wood from the earth, they prayed to the goddess of wood and so on.”

"The god," Serit hissed.

"Sorry, I must be remembering wrong.”

"The association with a material is just one of their many aspects,” Serit said. “Seron is the good of wood and law. He shaped our… their societies, gave them structure. Lunushé gives them clean water, but she also makes sure they return home safe from their rain-voyages.”

They had reached a table, the long sides hidden by bookcases running parallel to them. It was right at the end of the library, where the secret entrance was. Saia expanded her domain bit by bit, since she didn’t know what to expect. She could see more of the staircase, and a door at the end of it, but it was too far down to see what was behind it.

Serit and Avuru were continuing the conversation next to the table, completely ignoring the chairs.

“See, it’s a bit like the Arissian gods,” Avuru said. “The goddess that protects the carvers might be considered an equivalent to your god of wood. She’s more associated with nature than law and society, though.”

“The point isn’t that they’re similar. Why should one replace the other?”

“Our goal isn’t to replace, but to offer an alternative.”

“It’s not needed.”

“But what if we’re right? Their souls should get the chance to pray to the right gods before meeting them in the underworld.”

“Then you should advocate for the contrary too. For our religion to spread to Aressea. In case we’re right and you’re wrong.”

Avuru hesitated for a moment. Serit's smile reemerged.

"Sure," she said in the end. "We should, your priests’ job. You’ll agree we can’t help with something like that.”

"As if they'd be welcomed."

"Aressea is tolerant of other religions. I'm sure they'll treat your priests fairly, if they’ll come down here.”

It was her turn to smile.

Saia didn't know what to do. The door was there, just outside of her reach. As much as she hoped for someone to pass through, giving her at least a glimpse of what was going on beyond, the staircase seemed deserted.

She focused on the secret entrance: the mechanism seemed simple enough, with a pattern sculpted into the wall that could likely open the door. The bookcase that hid it was full of fake books, empty boxes of cheap wood covered in leather. Only the spine was elaborate enough to fool a casual onlooker. The wood of the frame itself was light enough it could be moved aside by two people working together. Or by a single, strong wind.

For that to work, she had to make sure nobody was looking. She couldn't just put Avuru to sleep, since her discussion with Serit was attracting the attention of a few nearby monks. A sudden interruption might have prompted them to investigate. The table was hidden but not sealed off from the rest of the library, so a monk could have wandered into the area at any moment. She had to distract all of them.

“I thought an expert like you knew that most of the priests are shilvé,” Serit was saying. "They can't go to earth."

Their words were interrupted by a series of low thuds, and then a louder crash as the wood of a huge bookcase on the other side of the library slammed against the floor.

The room was immersed in silence.

"The books!" someone wailed.

Avuru ran toward that sound, joined by all the other monks in the area. Serit moved as if to follow her too, but Saia pushed them back with a small wind. She used another one to move the fake bookcase aside, revealing the hidden door. She activated the pattern beside it, and it slid aside with a grating sound.

"It was you?" Serit asked.

"Yes. Quick, enter."

"Why?"

"I can't reach the bottom of the stairs from here. I'd go alone, but I don't have much viss left and we don't want someone to see me floating around."

"They'll notice we left!" Serit whispered. "They'll find out for sure."

"Let's hope there's another exit, then. Come on!"

Serit hesitated some more. They turned the corner of the library to check the fallen bookcase: the monks were busy with the pile of wood and paper, trying to salvage the most ruined volumes. A group of them was trying to push the bookcase back up, without much success. Not an image Saia planned to add to her diary for Aili.

"I'm not going to close that door," Saia said. "So they'll suspect you regardless. Might as well learn something."

“You’d be more respectful of books, if you had grown up around story-bottles,” Serit commented, but they were approaching the passage, so Saia didn't complain.

Once Serit was past the doorway, Saia moved back the bookcase and activated the pattern on the other side to close the passage.

"Go," she said.

"Where? I don't see anything."

"It's a short corridor. Put your hand on the wall, I'll tell you when the staircase starts."

"How short?" they asked, but they started advancing anyway.

They were slow, to the point getting caught before reaching the end of the stairs was a concrete danger. Saia regretted not going alone, even if making her sphere fly and moving so far from Serit meant wasting precious days of life.

They became even more cautious after starting the descent. Saia decided to ignore them and put all her energies toward expanding her domain, now that the room beyond the door was slowly entering her range.

It was a vestibule of sorts, completely empty except for three doors. The two at the sides were made of wood, the big one at the center of metal. The door on the left opened, letting a person through. They looked like a monk of the monastery, except for the fact that their tunic was black.

There were more of them in the adjacent rooms, Saia could see as Serit advanced: one was filled by a series of beds, separated only by a cloth divider mounted on a frame. Some of the monks were sleeping, or trying to, while others made conversation, as if they were standing in a separate room and not a few armlengths from everyone else.

The other room was a pantry of some kind, connected to a kitchen, connected to a bigger dining room she couldn’t see in its entirety yet. Only a few people were still lingering behind, completely dressed in black jumpsuits of a tighter material compared to the tunics, which were hanging from their shoulders like capes.

The central room, the one behind the metal door, intrigued her the most: it was incredibly long, with smooth stone walls and a floor covered in layers of metal. Steel, maybe. There was just one object filling a portion of that empty space, and it was placed right at the end of the room. No doors led into it except from the one in the vestibule.

She observed the object, but couldn’t figure out what it was. A piece of something, probably, since it had a vaguely triangular shape, but it curved to the point only the three corners touched the ground, as if they were following the shape of something invisible. It was made of gray-green metal, scratched and darker in places. It was bigger than a person laying down with their limbs spread open. Saia didn’t recognize the material, but the object had to be important if the monks had dedicated an entire room to it.

She observed the adjacent rooms and saw a group of other monks discussing among each other about something that seemed important. Saia listened for a bit, but they were only mentioning rationing food and producing new clothes.

For the moment there was nothing she could do, so she observed the rest of that place. It reminded her of the monks' village back at the mountain, even if considerably smaller. Despite the five long rooms full of beds, with bags and clothes abandoned beside them, it was mostly empty. She guessed most of the people had temporarily left for some reason. She didn't see other exits from the village than the staircase, but she found it unlikely that so many people had exited through the library, especially since they seemed to be trying to keep the existence of that place a secret.

Or maybe they were exactly the same monks as the ones above, they just changed clothes depending on whether they found themselves underground or on the surface for some reason she couldn’t fathom.

Serit took so long to reach the end of the staircase that she had time to analyze the lock of the first door until she could open it by using her winds.

Serit emerged into the light of the vestibule’s torches, blinking furiously.

"Now what?" they whispered.

"Have you ever worked with a gray-green metal?"

"If you mean oxidized copper..."

"No, it's not copper. And it's not oxidized, I think."

Serit stood with their back to the door, breathing fast like a trapped rabbit.

"Nothing comes to mind. Maybe if I see it..."

They stopped talking, as if regretting their words.

"It's behind the metal door."

Serit sighed and closed their eyes.

"Of course it is."

"Come on. There's nobody around."

The lock had been difficult to figure out, so she’d had to break some pieces. A fragment of metal fell down when Saia pushed the door open. Serit winced when it hit the stone floor.

"If they find out, I won't be able to explain this," they commented.

They stopped complaining when they saw the triangular shape in the distance.

"What's that?" they asked.

"No clue. I hoped you could tell me."

That was enough to convince them to enter.