“A library,” she breathed out in a reverent voice. If anyone ever built a temple to her, she’d ask them to make it a library. “With many books?” Who cared if she couldn’t decipher the languages in which they were written. There was magic in the feel of parchment and ink.

Again that brief smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Scrolls mostly, but there are some books. I can’t vouch for their condition.”

As he promised, the library stood two streets away, surrounded by a garden gone wild and choked with weeds and the ubiquitous ivy. Cededa helped her over a swathe of climbing vine, his bare hand warm in hers, his body seemingly unaffected by her touch. While in much better condition than the temple ruin they’d just left, the library showed the marks of destruction like every other building she had so far explored in Tineroth. Half of a staircase led to a second floor and then a third where shelves housed what must have been thousands of scrolls. All inaccessible to her unless Cededa could fly.

He chuckled and shook his head as if he heard her thoughts. “I’ve a few talents at my disposal. Flight isn’t one of them.” He gestured to a far corner, tucked under one of the stairwells. “Start there,” he said. “The newest scrolls are stored in those niches and won’t turn to dust when you disturb them. If you find something that interests you, bring it to me, and I’ll translate.” He nudged her toward the treasure trove and left her to idly explore another part of the library.

Imogen watched him for a few moments. Had he come here when the library stood whole and undamaged? He had once been a warrior king. That was how legend remembered him, yet she fancied he might have appreciated some of the scholarly pursuits.

The scrolls were predictably undecipherable, and in some cases illegible, their ink faded to ghostly scratches on the parchment. She brought Cededa her first armful of documents to translate. He made a perch of an overturned column top and invited her to sit beside him while he read aloud.

Most were inventories of harvest yields or the results of city court rulings. One made Cededa’s eyes flash and his lips thin to a tight line. Imogen glanced from him to the scroll and back again. “What is it?”

“A writ of arrest for the act of treason. My arrest.” He flung the scroll across the vast room before crooking his fingers at her. “Give me the next one.”

She wordlessly handed him another scroll. Who called for the king’s arrest those many centuries earlier? Was it even possible to arrest a monarch then? She didn’t think one could do it now.

The rest of the scrolls were more like the first bunch, dry accounts of trade goods and shipping bills, marriage records and births. She gathered the ones piled at her feet to return them to their cubby holes. “Your world then is much like ours now I think.”