Effie took a sip of hot chocolate, trying to look as if she was lost in her afternoon tea and had no interest at all in what anyone happened to be saying about the Diberi. Casually, she reached up and touched the caduceus in her hair. She pulled it out and turned it over in her fingers, like a hairpin she needed to adjust. As long as she was touching the caduceus, Effie could understand any spoken or written language. When she was sure no one was looking, she closed one hand around it, while continuing to eat her cinnamon bun with the other.

“Don’t worry,” the woman was saying. “No one in here speaks Milano, I promise you.”

“What about that girl?” asked the man.

“She’s only a child. And she’s an islander. Where on earth would she have learned Milano? Relax. Anyway, it’s not as if you’ve even got much to tell, from the sound of it.”

“Well, no. Mainly just what we know already. That there are definitely a lot more Diberi on the island all of a sudden. It’s as if they were paused, or frozen somehow—for about six years—but as of around a month ago, they’re back. The Fifteenth Order of the Diberi, based in Vienna, suddenly reconvened and two of their most prominent members then came here, for reasons completely unknown. And now they seem to be gathering in the unremarkable university in this unremarkable little city. . . . We have no idea why. And they’re planning some sort of raid at Midwinter. In two days.”

“What for?”

“They want to get to the Great Library. And then . . . who knows. There’s a prophecy that they are planning the end of the worlds, but it doesn’t come from a reliable source.”

“Whatever happened to that publisher? Skylurian something?”

“Skylurian Midzhar.”

“Yes, she came here too. Also to launch a raid on the Great Library.”

“She’s dead and buried. In the wrong order, I understand.”

“But why did she come here? There are things we’re not seeing.”

“Of course, some say there’s a portal near here that goes direct to Dragon’s Green.”

“Impossible. I mean, why would there be?”

“If there is, then maybe we can use it too.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Well, the Trueloves aren’t doing their job properly. Maybe we need to start doing it for them.”

“Unfortunately there is a strong chance that this portal is inside a person.”

“What? How?”

“In the form of an internalized boon only to be used by that person.”

“Then how would we use it?”

“It would be impossible without the very darkest magic, which, obviously, we could not use.”

“Hmmm.” The woman’s voice, then the clink of china touching china as someone put a cup on a saucer.