Dasai looked up at their arrival and introduced Roh to the Saiduans. For the last week, he’d spent all his time dancing and none in the archives. Short, balding Bael was the youngest – Aramey’s age – and the other looked to be a contemporary of Dasai’s. His name was Ashaar, and he wore his hair long and braided with red ribbons.

“You’ll act as runners today,” Dasai said, and handed Roh a scrap of paper. “Get acquainted with the catalogue at the back.”

“There’s no librarian?” Roh said.

“This is what’s left from three cities,” Dasai said. “The librarians from those are dead, and Bael is acting as record keeper for the collection. As you can see, he is otherwise engaged. We are spread thin, Roh.”

“Sorry,” Roh said.

Dasai waved a hand at him and called Kihin over to return a massive book covered in what looked like some kind of reptile’s skin.

The day became long and tedious. After, Roh was covered in dust and broken scraps of paper, delicate as ash. The day’s work pointed them toward two primary texts mentioned in secondary texts. One was a history of Isjahilde, a city far to the north already overtaken by the invaders. It was supposed to be written by a Dhai scholar nineteen hundred years before, just a few decades after the Saiduan completely conquered the continent. The other was called World-unmaker or World-breaker. It was listed six times in an account from a long-dead sinajista as the primary source for information on how omajistas manipulated the way between spaces.

“So, these people aren’t coming from boats,” Roh said.

“No,” Dasai said. “I suspect the Saiduan already know that. Somehow they’re moving between… spaces. Great distances. Movement over great distances is one power Oma is known to bestow. We need to find out how to prevent them from doing it.”

Roh hovered over Dasai’s shoulder as he read one of the passages aloud, “The loss of this world lies at the feet of the Dhai unmakers who failed to save it and the Saiduan unmakers who destroyed it. We who remain have undertaken a great task: to purge the World-unmakers from history and deny the Saiduan victory over another that they have achieved over us.”

Dasai sighed. “I will read the rest,” he said. “But it doesn’t look promising, if there was a conspiracy to destroy the records we were looking for long before we began our search.”

“What’s the point of all this?” Kihin said. “The Dhai lost last time. How do they expect we’d know how to win this time?”

“Patience,” Dasai said. But Roh didn’t hear much confidence in his voice. “We’ll look for the other texts referenced here. I’ll begin a list.”