Who else but a tyrant manipulates and sacrifices ordinary men and women to secure his own ends? Who else plans the ruin of people he has never met for no better reason than his belief that his needs outweigh theirs? You are the Great God Rile by another name, sir. What you call arrogance in the King of Belleger is his love for his people.

Bifalt’s wife would have taken pride in flinging her accusations at the librarian. Queen Estie kept silent. This was not some other place. It was the Last Repository. Here, Magister Marrow ruled. Other issues were more important than her outrage.

She needed to hear whatever he would reveal. She knew by his manner that he was not done.

“But there is more, Queen.” His underlying ire had the effect of bragging. “Rifles and cannon and restored sorcery were not the Repository’s only attempts to aid Belleger. Long ago, my predecessors set plans for our defense in motion.

“Why do you suppose there is only one bay on Belleger’s coast that offers passage past the cliffs? And why do you suppose the cliffs there fall away in terraces suitable for emplacements and cannon? That is not the work of natural forces. If your people had not spent generations on end killing each other”—his voice dripped scorn—“you would know of a convulsion that formed what is now the Bay of Lights. In fact, it was a precise sequence of convulsions. It was the Repository’s doing, Queen.

“My predecessors sent Magisters of earthquake to work there secretly. They invited Rile’s attack by offering him a more direct route to his goal than any other on this continent. And when my time came, I prepared the bay to repulse him. To be defended, Queen, with heavy iron and ordinary courage.

“In that, at least, I succeeded. Sadly, your King Bifalt has failed. Let him bear the blame, Queen. It is not mine.

“Now I have done what I can,” he finished. “I cannot do more.”

While the tall man regarded Estie with a kind of blind triumph, she trembled. In every part of herself—the woman, the wife, the Queen—she was appalled. She did not see Crayn shift closer to support her, or Lylin arrive at her side, or Fifth Daughter turn her face to the wall. Magister Rummage’s glower and Magister Avail’s strange distress meant nothing to her. Her limbs trembled as she rose from her stool to face the librarian standing. When she spoke, her voice rasped like a saw.

“And you did all this? The bay? Rifles and cannon? Taking away sorcery, then returning it? Contriving an alliance between Belleger and Amika? For what? To force King Bifalt to stand between you and your enemy?”

The last sunlight struck Sirjane Marrow’s face. It made him look as complacent as a corpse after a peaceful death.