As a counterpoint, lifespren broke off from the growing polyps and bobbed over to Lift, trailing in her wake. A swirling, green-glowing dust. Ahead of her, the Grand Indicium rose like the head of a bald man seen peeking above the back of the chair he was sitting in. It was a huge rounded mass of stone.

Everything in the city revolved around this central point. Streets turned in this direction, curling up to it, and as Lift drew close, she could see that an enormous swath of stone had been cut away around the Indicium. The round bunker wasn’t much to look at, but it sure did seem secure from the storms.

“Yes, the land does slope away from this central point,” Wyndle noted. “This focus had to be the highest point of the city anyway—and I guess they figured they’d just accept that, and make the central knob into a fortress.”

A fortress for books. People could be so strange. Below, crowds of people—most of them Tashikki—flowed in and out of the building, which had numerous screwlike sloped walkways leading up to it.

Lift settled down on the edge of the wall, feet hanging over. “Kinda looks like the tip of some guy’s dangly bits. Like some fellow had such a short sword, everyone felt so sorry for him they said, ‘Hey, we’ll make a huge statue to it, and even though it’s tiny, it’ll look real big!’”

Wyndle sighed.

“That wasn’t crude,” Lift noted. “That was being poetic. Ol’ Whitehair said you can’t be crass, so long as you’re talkin’ ’bout art. Then you’re being elegant. That’s why it’s okay to hang pictures of naked ladies in a palace.”

“Mistress, wasn’t this the man who got himself intentionally swallowed by a Marabethian greatshell?”

“Yup. Crazy as a box full of drunk minks, that one. I miss him.” She liked to pretend he hadn’t actually gotten eaten. He’d winked at her as he’d jumped into the greatshell’s gaping maw, shocking the crowd.

Wyndle piled around on himself, forming a face—eyes made of crystals, lips formed of a tiny network of vines. “Mistress, what is our plan?”

“Plan?”

He sighed. “We need to get into that building. Are you just going to do whatever strikes you?”

“Obviously.”

“Might I offer some suggestions?”

“Long as it doesn’t involve sucking someone’s soul, Voidbringer.”

“I’m not— Look, mistress, that building is an archive. Knowing what I do of this region, the rooms in there will be filled with laws, records, and reports. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them.”

“Yeah,” she said, making a fist. “Among all that, they’ll have written down strange stuff for sure!”

“And how, precisely, are we going to find the specific information we want?”

“Easy. You’re gonna read it.”

“… Read it.”