Rhita’s neck ached from twisting back and forth. Her carriage rolled with an irregular rhythm over the cobbled and slated paths, between feathery trees and stately date palms. The sun dipped in the west, throwing an orange light across the city, just as she had seen it the day before on entering the Great Harbor. Smoke drifted in thin dark ribbons from a tall brick stack appended to one science building. Students in white and yellow academic robes—mostly male—passed them on the path, eyeing Rhita curiously. She returned their stares frankly, calmly, though feeling none too calm inside. She didn’t like this place much—not now, perhaps not ever—and that bothered her. This was the center of culture and science in the Western World, after all. There was much for her to learn in Alexandreia—if the circumstances had been such that she could just study.

The oldest intact building in the entire Mouseion, the original central library, now housed the administrative offices and academic quarters. Once it had been ornate and lovely; now it looked a little bedraggled, though still magnificent, three stories of marble and onyx, decorated with gold-leaf-covered bosses and thousand-year-old grotesques from the time of the Second Occupation, during the Third Parsa Uprising. Sheets of paler marble had been added less than fifty years before to repair time-damaged walls. Thus far, none of the Libyan rockets falling on the delta had struck the Mouseion grounds.

The path led through an archway into the courtyard, polished granite and onyx paving stones arranged in a checkerboard cross with exotic plantings from Aithiopia and the Southern Great Sea occupying the corners, and an Arsakid Parsa stone lion fountain adorning the center.

The cart lurched to a stop and she stepped down. A young, small man in a black tunic and Teutonic-style leggings—a popular street fashion in the city now—came forward, a large toothy grin on his narrow brown face. “I am very pleased to meet the granddaughter of the sophē Patrikia,” he said, dipping forward slightly and passing his hand over his head in salute. “My name is Seleukos, and I am from Nikaea near Hippo. I am assistant to the bibliophylax. Welcome to the Library.”

“Thank you,” Rhita said. He dipped again and beckoned her to follow. She closed her eyes briefly, checking on the status of the clavicle—it had not been moved or approached—and then walked after the young man.