What she had dragged out of that hole in the seaside cliff was another partial copy. Farilane’s mistake, her jump to judgment, was prompted by the writing itself. The letters were not drawn in the typical Monastic Script—a font styling that Farilane maintained was designed for something other than reading. Instead, the words on the pages she’d found had been laid down by a civilian’s hand, someone with little practice or patience with a pen. The pages she found were old indeed, but not the original. Like all the others, her find was incomplete, and age had destroyed much of the writing. Despite her failure, Farilane discovered her efforts were not for naught. This was likely Falkirk de Roche’s personal copy of the book, and it was in better condition than any she’d found prior, allowing her to fill in many of the gaps that marred her masterwork, The Migration of Peoples. Her history of the major races of the world was a grand puzzle. De Roche’s copy of The Book of Brin provided many of the missing pieces, but that wasn’t what made the find so important. The real treasures were the notes in the margins, scribbles done in small, simple script that reminded Farilane of her own field book.

They were scrawled throughout the manuscript. A frustrating number were illegible, not merely due to age, fade, and rot, but most to horrible handwriting. She doubted even the author could have deciphered much of it. Still, Farilane did her best. Armed with a cup of salifan tea and seated on the high stool in her sanctum sanctorum, her literary lair, she practiced the forbidden art of bibliomancy—reading a book.

Three knocks on the door, a pause, then two more got her off the stool.

She knew who it was. That was their knock.

Most of the time Farilane pretended not to be home. She hated to be interrupted while working. Given that reading and writing were considered forms of magic and therefore illegal within the empire, she also preferred to know who was bothering her before she opened the door. Farilane didn’t actually think the palace guard would haul the princess of the empire to a stone cell if she were caught reading. The law against literature was randomly enforced, and the princess’s obsession was the worst-kept secret in the empire. Still, it might be politically embarrassing to the emperor if enough people reported her vice. This, then, was the motivation for developing the knock.

She threw open the door. “You’re not going to believe what I found, Vir—” She stopped, seeing that the philosopher wasn’t alone.

“Good morning, Princess.” Virgil bowed. He was dressed in his normal court robes, the archaic off-white pallium with the scarlet stole of a pedagogue. His hair hung in its accustomed rebellion, partially blinding him.

She nodded, then looked at his companion.