Her uncle took a seat on a stool she was using for stacking notes, moving the papers aside without comment. Though he was actually her great-uncle, Aphen found the designation awkward and called him simply Uncle, mostly as a term of endearment because they were so close. He was tall and lean and as blond as she was, although his hair was beginning to go gray. “It’s getting on toward midnight, you know. Whatever’s keeping you here could wait until morning.”

She smiled and nodded. “Nothing’s really keeping me. I just lost track of time. Thank you for rescuing me.”

He smiled back. “Find anything of interest today?”

“Nothing.” The lie came smoothly. “Same as always. Every morning I think that this will be the day I discover some great secret about the magic, some clue about a lost talisman or a forgotten conjuring. But each night I return to my bed disappointed.”

He looked around the room, taking in the shelves of books and boxes, the reams of papers stacked in their metal holders, the clutter and the scraps of documents and notes. “Perhaps there is nothing to find. Perhaps all you are doing is sorting documents that no one but you will ever read.” He glanced back at her. “I’m not trying to discourage you, not after all the work you’ve put in. I am only wondering if this is a fool’s errand.”

“A fool’s errand?” she repeated. Her blue eyes flashed. “You think I may have spent the last three hundred and sixty-four days on a fool’s errand?”

He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “That was a poor choice of words. Please forget that I spoke them. I don’t know enough about what you are doing to be able to question it with any authority. I only ask because I care about you.”

“You know why I am here, Uncle,” she said quietly. “You know the importance of what I am doing.”

“I know that you believe it to be important. But if there is nothing to find, if there is no magic to be found, no talismans to be recovered, then what have you accomplished?”

“I will have made certain of what you clearly suspect,” she answered. “I will have eliminated the possibility that something has been missed. A lot of time has passed and a lot of history been forgotten or lost. We are an old people, after all.”