If only Eneas could see me now, Agnes thought as she followed Vada into the main foyer. It was a huge echoing space with high ceilings in a jigsaw of teak and maplewood. There was no sign of faculty or students—the foyer was completely empty. It ended at a pair of mahogany doors and just when Agnes was wondering if perhaps they should try another building, the doors opened and three students, two girls and one boy, walked out, chatting excitedly in Pelagan, their arms loaded with books.

“. . . not at all like the rest of the family,” one of the girls was saying. All three stopped short when they caught sight of Agnes and Vada. The other girl and boy wrinkled their noses and Agnes suddenly realized she had not bathed in three days.

“Hello,” Agnes said, the Pelagan flowing off her tongue as if she had been born speaking it. “I’m—” She was about to introduce herself and then thought better of it. “I’m looking for the dean of admissions. I’m meant to have an interview this week.”

The dean seemed like the most likely friend of Ambrosine’s, given that she had sent Agnes her initial acceptance.

The first girl frowned. “The dean has left for the day.”

Agnes’s heart sank. “Oh.”

“Is there anyone else we can speak to?” Vada asked.

“The librarian,” the second girl suggested. “He’s always here.”

She jerked her head to the doors behind them.

Agnes wasn’t sure how a librarian could help, but she’d take somebody over nobody at this point.

“All right,” she said. “Thank you.”

The students left quickly, their whispers fluttering around the cavernous space. Agnes waited until they’d gone and then pulled the heavy door open.

The smell of books enveloped her the moment she stepped inside, parchment and leather and oil, dust and wood and sunlight. The library was enormous and Agnes found herself momentarily stunned. She walked in a daze down a green-carpeted aisle, shelves stretching out before her, until she came to a large central area where tables with little reading lamps and finely upholstered chairs were set at neat intervals. Agnes lifted her gaze and felt dizzy at the sight of three more levels of books, balconies open to the central space with railings of polished bronze.

“Can I help you?”

She jumped as a man with thinning red hair and bifocals appeared from between two shelves. He wore a simple linen shirt that was slightly rumpled, tweed pants, and yellow suspenders. He held two slender books with gilded spines in his hand. Behind the glasses was a pair of clever blue eyes, so pale they were almost clear.

“I’m meant to have an interview this week,” Agnes said. “For the Academy of Sciences. But . . . they told me the dean left for the day.”