“But why were the archives on the floor in the first place?” the scholar asked.

“According to my father, his father and his wife’s father both increased the collection—already large—buying up any antiquarian documents they could find. They were enthusiasts, and they vied in finding old and rare scrolls, books, loose sheets. My father’s father had not expected to inherit, and so had more leisure than I. But let’s see how you do with this one—” Jeddrin pulled out a scroll he knew had been written but seven generations back.

The scholar peered at it. “It’s old.”

“Yes. I’m wondering if you can read it.”

“I think—let me see—it is a record of … of goat breeding?”

“Yes. With notes of weather, diseases, and so forth.”

“I don’t recognize some of the words—” The scholar pointed.

Jeddrin said, “Rain.”

“Really? It’s not the same—”

“No. Our word for rain drops the second sound, and the breath-sound has narrowed.”

“You’ve studied this?”

“My father insisted. I was to be his scholar, you see; my elder brother was to inherit—much the same situation as with my father’s father. My elder brother slipped and fell on a vine stake and died of it; neither of us had married yet.”

“So you can read all these?” The scholar waved at the shelves.

“Of course,” Jeddrin said. “And older, besides. But now I’ll take you to the store-pile, as we call it, things still unsorted. Apparently all my ancestors collected writings; it may not be fully cataloged even in my lifetime.”

“I could help,” the scholar said.

“I think not,” Jeddrin said. “If you cannot read it, how could you catalog it?”

The store-pile filled a series of connecting rooms, divided by function. The farthest held unsorted materials, heaps and piles on floors and shelves. In the next, baskets and bins held roughly sorted items, those tainted by blackstain or blue carefully segregated from the rest, in closed containers. The two outermost rooms had tables where scribes copied out the most damaged materials.

“I employ five archivists and scribes at present,” Jeddrin said to the scholar, whose jaw had dropped. “In my father’s day, only one of these rooms had been cleared for copyists. Now two.”

“I am sure the Duke of Immer would hire even more, if you would trust—”

“No,” Jeddrin said, without heat. “Every family has records it does not share, and I am not handing over unsorted materials, that my family guarded for generations, without knowing what is in every one.”

“How much work do you do here?”

“I? I have little time for it, though I try to spend an hour a day reading, to retain my skills. I am presently reading a series of letters between my great-great-grandfather and someone in Pliuni, discussing the breeding of goats and whether our goats here were brought from Old Aare or tamed from wild goats in the Westmounts.”

“But if you aren’t looking yourself, how do you know what the Duke seeks has not been found already?”