Trild entered the library with a sigh.
"It took most of the day to gather everyone, I apologize," Trild said as he strode toward Magi Yole's desk.
Behind him came Kaulu men dressed in hardened armour, each dragging a librarian each between a pair of them. Magi Yole looked up but didn't appear surprised or impressed.
The men weren't there to make an impression on Magi Yole, but instead on the librarians who were younger and stupider. Young men always believed themselves better than their elders. In many ways that could be true, but to question how Magi Yole ran the library after how long things had run so well was foolhardy at best.
Those who tried Magi Yole were always denied their formal complaints about the matter. Trild felt responsible for asking after the event, so he could pass it on to his father.
"I felt it as I approached, who was stupid?"
"Trathor came in," Magi Yole rasped, sounding weary. "He argued with me. Told me I was to open the library immediately or I would be removed of my position. I removed him of the school."
Trild almost laughed because he knew he'd need to repeat that to Trathor and his father, and he desperately wanted to see the look on Trathor's face. However, he doubted Magi Yole would appreciate the laughter, so he bit it back.
Then was the time to be formal and respectful, not share a love of seeing Trathor brought down a peg or two.
"And it is near my rest time," Magi Yole added with a wheeze.
"My questions are for them, not you. As long as they have access to everything while we speak. No books will be taken out. I mainly want to run a few queries and pull a few of the old ones. Once you return to your desk, we will gather and discuss it with you. Is this suitable?"
"It is."
"Good. Making the library disappear probably would have been easier."
"May have," Magi Yole said as he heaved a breath and appeared to struggle.
"Can I offer you an arm?" Trild asked.
"Not you and your leg, but an arm would be welcomed."
Trild motioned to one of his men. The other moved forward and helped Magi Yole off.
The man was amazing, but his numerous health issues meant he needed to be in bed when he said so. Trild had always believed Magi Yole used some of that magic of his to extend his life by using his bed. He had never brought it up with anyone else because he worried it would start an avalanche that he didn't want to be the cause of.
The old man had always been the friendliest face at the school.
Kaulu also didn't control the library, but they weren't to talk about that. Naena likely slipped into control accidentally. The next year, when Veles came through and requested control, everything would return to normal. Until then, Trild was to do whatever he could to keep Magi Yole in control of the library.
No matter how many students or staff he had to kill in the process.
Magi Yole was, technically, a hot potato no one wanted to be caught holding when it finally fell apart.
"First show me the failed query from the summer," Trild said.
He waited as several of the librarians were released. They went about retrieving the query files from the lower cabinet. It took four librarians working together, overlaying their magic, to open the drawers. Magi Yole could do it alone, with a tap of his foot at times.
Magi Yole's magic would flicker through the files and bring them through so fast it was like flipping through pages in a book, and he almost always landed on the right spot. The librarians spent nearly twenty minutes pulling the drawer open.
Failed queries were kept at the front of the file for two years, meaning all the librarians needed to do was open the drawer and retrieve the first file.
It took them fifteen minutes more to retrieve the file.
The query was set on the desk before Trild as the librarian winced and rubbed at his back. Trild arched an eyebrow at the man, then reached out with his right hand and pulled the query toward himself with an extended finger as he grasped the head of his cane at the same time.
It was very much a threat, which the librarian flinched at.
When he set the cane down, he did so with a thump.
"This is a standard audit query," Trild said. "Who did this?"
"I did," one of them said. "Some smug second year throwing his weight around."
"Some?" Trild asked as he jerked his gaze to the librarian. "Some smug second year?"
Not just anyone could bring a standard audit query to the librarians. Only a member of the Seven could. The fact that a librarian would refer to one of them in such a way was disgraceful.
"Yes," the man said, confusion coming to his features. "A student ranks lowly compared to the line of alumni that waited behind him."
"The alumni waited because four librarians are required to run the desk in the absence of Magi Yole," Trild said. "You were running a query, and you took four hours to return a completed list. And then you are noted for being crass, rude, dismissive, and even attempted to end the query with an incomplete list. This was a Seven audit paper. As far as you were concerned, this was handed to you by a member of the Seven Families. Kaulu, Veles, Pan, Eshu, Cagn, Lugh, Fox, one of us came to you with a query, and you failed that query. Not him. You. You killed some poor, innocent bystander out there waiting for this answer. You've allowed a dangerous mage to escape, endangering not only others but also yourself. Congratulations, you are blacklisted and may go."
Trild turned back to the query.
They were meant to be signed by the auditor. The query went unsigned except with a horizontal line followed by a vertical one. There was no signet imprint to indicate which family had sent the audit.
"Who brought this?" he asked.
"What?" another asked.
"Four of you at the desk," Trild snapped. "You are all here. Who brought you this Seven audit paper?"
"Selifer," a voice said behind Trild.
Trild turned to the librarian, who blinked and leaned back just slightly, but then straightened himself.
"Selifer brought the query," the man said. "I recognize him now, but Magi Yole spoke with him briefly and spoke his name. Two different coloured eyes, second year, flashy like her. I thought he was a wildling picked up by one of you."
Over the summer, Trathor renewed his spell. The spell was always performed at the university. The grounds were emptied except for those who participated in the spell and helped with cleanup afterward. Trild had visited to get close enough to the spell that he might have felt something of it.
Selifer had been there, running down a hallway as the spell began. He had disappeared around a corner.
"I believe I've seen him once," Trild muttered. "And I'd say that would be a good summation of the boy. Who else was there?"
Two other hands raised.
Those two were removed from the others. Their files would be carefully reviewed, and interviews conducted. Kaulu was taking their duties over the library seriously. Magi Yole was more than upset.
"This failed due to librarian error," Trild said. "This is no fault of the library. But what is this, here?"
He lifted the page, spotting a handwritten list attached to the back of it with a clip. Slipping the page off, he brought it to the front and looked it over. It took a long moment for the lines of code to settle into making sense.
"What is this?" he asked, his voice a little higher than he meant it to be.
One of the librarians behind the desk leaned forward.
"Oh, that's the proposed indexing system."
The man spoke with disgust, yet seeing the list.
"I beg your fucking pardon?" Trild asked, a finger on the page.
He had never seen it before. It was brilliant and new and had yet to be brought to his attention. He wanted to know who he needed to beat into submission for not informing him that such a thing existed.
"Magi Yole has been pushing it—"
"Pushing it on who? I've not received word of this."
"On us, we keep telling him there are all sorts of flaws in it. It labels Bashto as bab and six other things. It gives too many indicators. It'll triple or quadruple our queries and our workload."
Trild stared at the man, furious that more work was the only real reason to complain. There would be an increase in workload for those who could read the system. The Seven could adjust their searches, but if they overwhelmed the librarians, there was a simple answer.
"If your workload goes up, we hire more of you," Trild snapped. "Who has seen this?"
"Cagn and Fox, they weren't impressed."
Trild growled, causing the man to flinch away from him.
"Representative or lord?"
"One of each just as you say."
"Neither has ever been strong in research, relying on your people most of the time," Trild muttered. "I want a sampling of this new indexing."
"If you let him replace it, it replaces it all," the librarian protested. "When it fails, we'd have to go through and reindex them all by hand."
Trild had once picked up a book indexed as healing magic. It advised how to use magic to make a woman succumb to a mage's wishes. Burning the current system to the ground in the process was a bonus for Trild.
"And half of the indexing is incorrect," he said. "But keep talking, and the Seven will use this indexing, and you can stick to the old stuff."
"A book can only carry one type of indexing at a time. Not two."
It was not a fact that Trild had previously known about the library, but he tended to rely on librarians to find his books, or rare booksellers. The family library was much more orderly, more like the proposed indexing, but he couldn't tell the librarian that.
Instead, he recalled the ancient method, before the library became active. The books had been indexed on paper and catalogued in hundreds of drawers.
"Then the Seven will use the indexing, and the rest of you can go back to the old way. I can make that happen as well. Less work for Magi Yole, I'm sure. We allowed you to index the books. You librarians insisted that it must be done. When it got too big, you wanted to give control of the queries to the library itself, and then when we gave that to you, you bitched for years about it."
"Men before me with less knowledge about the magic that is the library. His plan would overburden the library and cause it to collapse in on itself because too many people would be making too many queries once they realized they didn't have to read the whole book to find what they need."
"The library that makes books below us? Grows on its own? That library? The one that can disappear itself at the flick of Magi Yole's fingers? The one that keeps those files and makes every step of your job painfully long because you're all a bunch of idiots? Should put Naena behind that desk. She'd probably make it dance like he does. Your difficulties with the library are because of you. Quit spreading gossip, quit making assumptions, and stop pissing off Magi Yole!"
A small, deadly silence followed Trild's words, and then the library groaned in agreement.
"Now, why is this new indexing attached to the back of the query?" he demanded.
"He brought it like that. We have to take all paperwork brought with the query."
Trild didn't understand why a second year would submit a forged Seven query with a list of a proposed indexing system that the Seven were mostly unaware of. As if Selifer was attempting an audit himself, one that the librarians failed.
And then what?
"Selifer brought you a copy of the new indexing?"
"Yes, though, that was done three weeks before Magi Yole started rolling out the new indexing."
Selifer knew something Trild didn't.
"I want a copy of Naena's reading list in the new indexing along with the samplings, including all books up until the library's striking."
"Most of her reading's been done in the archives this year. We can get you the others. What about the queries?"
"Oh, I planned to spend hours telling you all what I'd do to you and your families if you were rude again," Trild said. "If you'd rather—?"
"I'll start on Naena's list. You three. You and you, create the sampling."
"How many books were converted?" Trild asked.
"About forty-five before we caught it."
"Excuse me?"
The librarian stared at Trild, a bead of sweat appearing on the man's forehead. Trild frowned, not understanding why asking about the indexing would cause the man to panic.
"The indexing started appearing in the library. We realized it spread from the books themselves and removed them from the shelves. To stop the spread."
Cold flooded through Trild.
A second later, it vanished as he realized it must have been Selifer. The boy had a copy of the indexing over the summer before Magi Yole told the others. Selifer learned the new indexing, became excited by it and implemented it in the library.
The first option that flashed through Trild was that the library's magic had evolved.
That was the hot potato, something they were certain would happen if Magi Yole were ever forced out before he was ready. Evolution was the mark of thinking magic, and once magic began thinking, there was no stopping it.
Not when it held all the knowledge of all the magic the university had ever seen.
Trild had to talk to, and possibly silence, Selifer. If he could just hold on until the end of the year and hide all evidence of it, it would be Veles's problem. Just so long as it wasn't his problem.
He didn't want to have to tell Alena he was the reason the library went away forever.