CHAPTER 90 – Maiden and Crone

An age had passed for Saphienne since she last entered the library, and potent nostalgia made her pause on the threshold in recognition of what she had never consciously admitted to herself:

This had been her home.

With that revelation came the pang of loss, as she beheld in the phrasing of her thought that she had become homeless since she had been attacked. Whereas once the shelves had been a wonderment that conveyed the feeling of childhood, now they were only wood and books arranged by subject; all the grandeur had faded from the curtains and cushions. When she squinted, she could no longer see the places where she had read to Kylantha, nor discern the sill of the window where she had practiced calligraphy, nor the seat by the fire where she had often lost herself in books.

Where had it all gone? Where had she gone, that she no longer saw herself there?

Faylar was behind the front desk, preoccupied with removing what Saphienne assumed were filled pages from the interior of the Tome of Correspondence. To repress her sadness she watched him, seeing that the enchantment took the form of a brown outer binding which affixed to an inner book via its golden clasps. The spine of the binding was also decorated with gold, into which a medallion was set–

And from which the disc was presently being extracted. Faylar set the medallion down and took another from the drawer open before him, clicking the second into place before he reached for a different volume.

Her curiosity had grounded her. “…What in the world are you doing?”

He paused, smiling without looking up. “Filaurel said you were too young to handle the tome when you were apprenticed to her…” Faylar beamed where he met her gaze. “…I suppose this means I’ve officially surpassed you, doesn’t it?”

She let him revel in his achievement, and approached, leaning her elbows on the desk. “I’d supposed that the pages could be swapped out somehow — my master said the enchantment was in the binding. What about the rest? How does it work?”

Pleased to know more than her about a magical subject, Faylar proudly elaborated. “The Tome of Correspondence is actually this cover, which can fit around most sizes of books. So long as the pages being sent from another tome are smaller than those of the book the binding is attached to, it will reproduce them.”

Saphienne lifted the book he’d discarded, flicking through its contents — and raising an eyebrow as she saw it was mostly blank. “This isn’t full.”

“I’ll put it back in when I’m done.” He pointed to the medallion he’d removed. “The emblem is… I don’t know what a wizard would describe it as, but it’s matched to others of the same design, and all tomes with the same emblem are linked together. That one is used for general correspondence.”

She eyed the the new medallion he’d inserted. “And this one?”

“Ever wonder how books are shared between libraries?”

Saphienne blinked — then smiled broadly. “Really? They copy them?”

“When it’s appropriate. Sometimes, like with loans, it’s better just to send them physically.” He opened the volume he was about to insert, showing her several paragraphs of neat scrivening. “This work is surplus to the collections, and it’s physically bigger than a text we’ve been offered, so it can be recycled.”

“The tome overwrites existing contents? But if both tomes have different text, how–”

“Additions to identical books have priority when overwriting, and then whichever book is inserted first overwrites the others,” he clarified, before pointing out a row of symbols below the medallion, “unless paused. This mark enables sending, this one receiving, and this quiets the announcement when new content arrives.”

She marvelled at the design. “This is more sophisticated than I expected; I’ll have to ask Taerelle about the enchantment.”

“Be sure to let me know what she says.” He grinned conspiratorially…

…Then gradually sobered as he finished readying the tome. “I was wondering when I’d see you and Celaena again. My mother said I should keep my distance until things settled down.”

Celaena had guessed why he hadn’t visited. “We’ve not been out much.”

“I’ve heard some rumours.” He didn’t need to tell her their subject. “My mother told me that you had nothing to do with the attack — that you were working with Sundamar to collect evidence.”

His unspoken question made Saphienne straighten up, folding her arms. “That’s right. I wanted the five of them to face justice.”

Faylar accepted this, pausing to skim the text of the soon-to-be-replaced book. “…Did Laewyn and Celaena have a fight?”

Laewyn had been absent since she gave Celaena her alibi. “She was with Celaena when the wardens came…” Anyone could be listening to them – and Faylar’s mother was herself a Warden of the Wilds – but telling him a direct lie still made her unhappy. “…They were indisposed at the time. She must have been shaken.”

“She’s been stopping by most afternoons, when she finishes in the bakery.” He closed the book and tapped the symbol for receiving. “You must be right: she hasn’t wanted to talk about what happened. Thessa wondered if it was Taerelle.”

Given that Thessa knew who was responsible, learning that improved Saphienne’s opinion of the artist’s guile. “No. Taerelle had an alibi — and she’s too close to being a wizard to do anything so dangerous and brazen.”

“I didn’t think it was her,” he insisted. “From what I know of her, she seems too efficient for what was done to Lensa. I heard Lensa was…” He coughed. “…I heard that her attacker took their time.”

“Gaelyn said so.”

Faylar swallowed. “Sundamar believes–”

“I know: he blames me.”

The apprentice librarian shook his head. “I’ve never seen my mother argue with him like this. He won’t listen to reason. He doesn’t even have an explanation for how — he just insists that you’re a monster.”

She breathed through her nose to channel her temper. “I imagine he’s been telling anyone who’ll listen. He’s furious with himself for taking the risk, and for failing to catch whoever it was who did it; easier for him to blame me than reflect on his choices.”

“My mother told him to take the rest of the month to cool off.”

“Do you think he will?”

Faylar pursed his lips. “…Cool off? No. I think he’s going to be your enemy until whoever did it gets caught. He’ll probably apologise after.”

Doubting it, she smirked. “Something to anticipate with–”

“Go to hell!”

Both Saphienne and Faylar flinched as the shout exploded through the hush, the apprentice librarian wincing as he glanced across his shoulder. Saphienne recognised the voice as well — and discerned that its origin was in the kitchen.

“…What was that?”

He cringed. “It’s an obscure human profanity–”

“That’s not what I meant.” Saphienne half-wandered around the desk as she peered back through the stacks. “I’ve never heard Filaurel lose her–”

To her astonishment, Saphienne saw the elder and master jeweller, Eletha, emerge from the back of the lower floor. Her head was lowered as she slunk from the shelves and went past on the opposite side of the room, where both children saw her greenish gaze was glimmering with unshed tears.

Neither Saphienne nor Faylar said anything until after the doors had closed.

“Filaurel didn’t want to talk to her,” Faylar murmured. “She’s been very cold, lately.”

Every part of Saphienne wanted to go straight to Filaurel, but given what had happened between them, she knew that wasn’t possible, that she wasn’t–

…Saphienne felt for the purse in her pocket.

 

* * *

 

Fuming where she furiously scrubbed a teapot in the filling kitchen sink, Filaurel didn’t notice it was Saphienne who approached. “I advise you to be somewhere else right now, apprentice.”

Heart pounding, Saphienne studied her flush. She clenched the coin. “…I don’t want to do that.”

Hearing the girl, Filaurel went rigid and dropped the pot into the soapy water. She didn’t turn toward the doorway.

“…But I’ll go, if you ask me to.”

Filaurel closed her eyes; she spoke very, very softly. “No. Hello, Saphienne.”

Why did she always keep herself distant? Saphienne yearned to enter the room, but the coin hadn’t courage enough. “I have poor timing.”

“That’s her fault, not yours.” Filaurel rinsed her hands under the enchanted pitcher, then tipped it upward to stop its flow before drying them on a hanging towel. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Saphienne forced a smile that she didn’t feel. “Depending on who you ask…”

Her joke didn’t sway Filaurel, who still didn’t face her. “I wasn’t expecting you to drop by like this.”

Flee, said her heart. “I hadn’t planned to.” Fly, whispered the silence. “I don’t really know what I’m doing here… I just…”

Filaurel leant against the sink, her head down. “…I wondered how you were doing.”

What should she say? Kylantha would have known.

“I heard you’re staying with Celaena.” The woman with eyes like the sea gripped the edge as though clinging on above a fall. “I know about what happened. I wanted to… visit you. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to.”

“I would have liked–” Saphienne swallowed. “…That.”

Filaurel inhaled sharply. When she pivoted, she was dazed. “Saphienne… what are you asking for? What do you need?”

To be wanted; to be embraced; to be loved. To be what she was not, and never would be. To belong with someone who understood her, and who understood life better than she did, and who would guide her along a path she could not find, away from the lonely remove that surveyed the world from a vantage that was unassailable and yet – and yet – inevitable. To be held when she stumbled, and carried when she couldn’t walk a step further.

To be herself, while not herself.

To have the impossible.

“…Your advice.” To have whatever she could, no matter how little. “And your company — when it’s convenient for you.”

Why did Filaurel only stare?

“…To be friends, once I grow up.”

What were her thoughts? Her doubts?

“…I don’t want to intrude.”

Filaurel shuddered; she retreated to the tall stool by the countertop. She loosed her hair from its band, then fretted with it as it hung forward around her hunching shoulders. “I can do that much.”

Who was there, with her? Whose ghost pushed her from behind? Whose giggling squeal did she dream she heard as she stepped into the kitchen and approached Filaurel? “Can we go back to the way things were?”

Her mentor looked down. “I don’t know. I wish so.”

Unable to switch it to her other palm, Saphienne set the coin on the counter before she held out her hand.

Filaurel was slow to take her fingertips in her own, but for a brief moment, she clasped them so very tightly.

Then she let go, and drew a resuscitating breath. “Not today. Today, I feel like hell.”

Missing her already, and yet close enough to feel her warmth in the bright and narrow kitchen, Saphienne retrieved the coin and made herself be curious. “What does that word even mean? Does telling someone to go to hell mean the same thing as telling them to–”

“Hell is a human religious concept.” Filaurel’s chest heaved, once, in an unvoiced and pained laugh. “To those who believe in it, hell awaits the wicked when they die… which I know doesn’t make sense, but humans imagine they endure beyond death. It’s an inescapable place of eternal torment and suffering. Or, to some, it’s a state of being — what it feels like to be forsaken by the gods.” She shrugged. “I expect it’s hard to imagine.”

Quite the opposite. “Telling someone to go there seems worse than telling them to go into the ground and rot… that’s a harsh thing to say to someone.”

“Some deserve it.”

She squinted. “…Like Eletha? She’s so very quiet. All she does is work on her jewellery. I don’t know how you can think that of her.”

Filaurel sighed as she stood, her hands crossed to massage her shoulders. “You don’t know her like I do.”

“But you had me study with her day and night for months — I thought I understood her quite well. You know her that much better?”

“Of course I do.” Filaurel’s smile was rueful. “She’s my mother.”

 

* * *

 

Their parting, like too many of late, was awkward; yet Saphienne felt better about herself as she emerged from the library and stared up at the clouds in the afternoon sky.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

She had limited choices about the life she would lead and the person she would be, but she had choices all the same. This, she had known since the day she forced herself into contention for an apprenticeship with Almon. Yet, that hadn’t been so monumental as what she had just done.

Feebly, as though groping for the shape of it with her impaired hand, Saphienne had the first, tremulous impression that she could decide more than what she did and how she would later remember. For all that she could think deeply and deviously before acting, as she stood upon the true steps of the real library she fathomed that there was another intelligence at work in her. There was a decision that lay behind her decisions — and it wasn’t as simple as her beliefs, as conflicted as her principles, or as ingrained as her passions.

Defiance: that was what it had taken. But what – or who – had she defied, when she fought against her own judgement and went to Filaurel?

Was it fate? She had never consented to having her future divined.

Was it simply herself? How could a person defy herself — was choice not the very affirmation of selfhood? To defy oneself was to bow to another.

Then… was she defying someone else? That made no sense.

Goosebumps rose as she recalled Celaena and her father.

“…But I don’t have parents…”

There was something wrong with Saphienne, and she couldn’t articulate to herself what it was. She didn’t like the life she was living, didn’t like the person she was becoming, and she knew the fault lay within herself — knew also she could defy it… and that meant…

She sank down onto the steps, holding her knees against her chest; her gaze was no longer turned to the malformed heavens, instead directed utterly inward.

When she rose again, she didn’t have answers — but she had someone to ask.

 

* * *

 

The grey door was no less forbidding when she knocked on it, but she made her fist firm around the copper coin and fixed herself upon keeping to the terrifying way that awaited her behind it.

When her door cracked opened, Taerelle greeted Saphienne with a sly and self-satisfied smile. “I wondered if you would come today. How went your lesson?”

“…Not well.”

“I anticipated as much.” She opened wide the door, revealing that she was dressed in black trousers and blouse beneath a diaphanous, smoke-like shawl. “Come inside, prodigy. We shall talk.”

Yet when Saphienne entered the cramped sitting room, Taerelle stood on the threshold and flicked her fingers in evocation of a spell, speaking an almost understood syllable that lit her eyes with white light that could never be fractured.

She crossed her arms as she peered out into the grove. “Trail after Saphienne if you must — but I won’t let you invade my privacy. Begone.”