Vast, circular, and built of ancient stone, the Grand Curia immediately called to mind not a courtroom but an arena. This was no coincidence. Once, the Grand Curia had been exactly that: a gladiatorial arena where trials by combat were conducted before the lustily cheering Gallowsport crowds. When the Munaz Emperors reformed their code under the guidance of the Academies Arcane, the bar of seer-magistrates had outlawed such trials, deeming them incapable of producing just results. Legend had it that if one knew where to look, bloodstains could still be seen under certain pews in the gallery and even under the High Bench, both of which were much later additions to the stone foundations. As a boy, Ammas had searched for them doggedly, but never found any.
The whole of the Curia was lit with gray moonlight: the vast open ceiling had been sealed over with a dome of glass and iron. Unconsciously Ammas looked up. The rolls of canvas he remembered from his youth, intended to be drawn across the underside of the glass dome if the sun should be too bright, were still there.
The High Bench was an enormous semicircle of mahogany, engraved with symbols of the Grand Curia and the seal of the House of Deyn. Along its rear stood dozens of oaken wing chairs similar to the one in Senrich Mourthia's private courtroom. Trials and hearings in this place could see anywhere from a lone scowling judge to the full court of twenty-five, once all seer-magistrates and now a mixture of priests of the Graces and of Tol Daether. The centermost and largest chair was the seat of the Overseer, and behind it, burrowed into the stones at the end of a shallow passage, stood a narrow door that led to the Overseer's chambers.
Ammas paused at the door, testing it, finding it locked. He half-expected the key not to work, but the lock yielded to it as easily as any other had. The room beyond was pitch black -- this deep in the Grand Curia, there were no windows save the one above their heads.
Ammas turned to face the others. "Carala tells me she cannot sense much wolfish presence here. That seems strange to me, but I trust her. If we find nothing in the archives, we'll head back to Mourthia House." His eyes met Silenio's. "And then to Bluestead House. I am not leaving Gallowsport until I have found these Swiftfoot wolves, and if that means intruding on the Prefect's grief, so be it."
Silenio smirked. "You have more steel than I thought, Mourthia."
Ammas, who could have gone the rest of his life without praise from Silenio Deyn, said nothing in response. "The archives," he said to the group at large, "are much more disorienting than the rest of the Curia. They are designed to confound intruders. I think it is inadvisable for any of you to accompany me there. Let me scout them out and see what I can find. If needed I can call for you." He nodded to Casimir, who touched the hilt of his skymetal dagger and nodded in return. "Barthim, come here a moment."
Barthim bent close to Ammas. "I am not liking this, you going down there by yourself. This is very much being a trap, I fear."
"It might be," Ammas nodded. "But there's our Imperial friend to consider. I don't want to split us up anymore than I have to. He might be committed to helping his sister, but he might not be, and there's no telling what we'll find down there. Don't worry. Unless they've completely rebuilt the archives, I should be able to navigate them." His voice dropped even lower. "Keep Casimir safe. Get him out of here if it becomes necessary. Carry him if you have to."
"Just Cass?" Barthim looked surprised, though not entirely displeased. "Not Carala?"
Ammas's eyes lit on Carala for a moment. She had drawn her own dagger, and was smiling hesitantly. A flicker in her eyes told him she no more liked the idea of Ammas descending into the archives alone than did Barthim. "Just Casimir," he murmured. "Carala can take care of herself, and -- she may be dangerous."
Barthim nodded, clapping the cursewright on the back. "The Hethmar watch over you, my good friend. Tell us if you are finding the Hangman down there."
Ammas smiled thinly. After drawing his own lamp from his pack, he stepped into the Overseer's chambers for the first time in twenty years.
Once this room had borne the unmistakable imprint of Senrich Mourthia's personality. Paintings he admired (like his son he had been fascinated by the tales of the lost city of Atrolom), obscure seer-magistrate texts, even more obscure arcane texts, and an ever-present aroma of kossun smoke had once filled the place. Now it seemed austere, almost sterile. Ammas supposed it was now shared among the priestly successors to the seer-magistrates and no one judge occupied it for very long. The furniture was functional and unremarkable, and the books that lined its shelves were prosaic collections of Imperial law, alongside texts of the Graces and of the Father of Wealth.
The door to the archives, however, was just as Ammas remembered it: arched, bound in iron, and with faintly strange proportions, as if it were a door not merely to a library but to a wholly different world. Sometimes when he called on the Dead, the doors they appeared through resembled this very portal. Once again he expected the key to fail, but again he was surprised: the lock turned without complaint. Drawing a deep breath, dagger in one hand and lantern in the other, Ammas descended into the Curia archives.
Mourthia House, the Grand Curia, and Gallowsport itself had all been as recognizable as those places were in his youth. Now, though, he received a shock: in no way was this the archive he remembered. When Ammas had come here in his youth, the shelves stretching into seeming infinity before him had been neatly arranged with rows and rows of legal or arcane texts. The filing system had been fiendishly complex -- designed, as was the archive itself, to befuddle unwanted researchers -- but with the assistance of a seer-magistrate anything related to the law could be found here, from the history of assizes in the province of Dyroth to the first Imperial code drafted by the Munaz Emperors to the (quite long) list of executions ordered by Somilius Deyn III.
Now Ammas saw enormous, untidy piles of books of every description. The legal texts remained sensible and orderly, but they were obscured by haphazard stacks of innumerable volumes, ranging in size from simple chapbooks to oversized folios to comically huge tomes that had to rest on the floor, no shelf in this archive capable of accommodating their bulk. Nervously he turned down his lantern's wick: one errant spark and the entire archive would go up in a bonfire that would be visible from the harbor.
The smell of mold was almost choking, and here and there he saw the telltale mark of mice who had made a meal of some of these books. The already narrow paths between the towering shelves had been reduced to claustrophobic passages barely a foot wide. Twisting this way and that, Ammas made his way among the books for several minutes, hoping eventually to reach the archivist's office that stood at the center of the library. Ultimately he succumbed to his curiosity, though, and selected a book at random, turning to its flyleaf.
It proved to be a simple catalogue of metals and tools employed by the forgewrights, so simple even Ammas, who knew little forgewright lore, recognized most of the terms. Clearly this was an introductory text, intended for youthful students who had not been apprenticed yet. More curious than ever, Ammas inspected the inside cover. Stamped there was the Deyn crest, superimposed against an open book: the emblem of the Imperial College, the first of the Academies Arcane to fall, quickly followed by the Maathinhold itself.
The implication of this discovery seemed to take an eternity to settle into his brain, but when it did, Ammas's eyes grew huge and the book fell from his nerveless fingers. He took a moment to set the lamp in as safe a place as he could find, a rare clear patch on one of the nearby shelves, then began pawing through the stacks of books almost blindly, not caring at all for their subjects, only seeking the imprints of the lost academies.
Here he found the mark of Witchlight Tower, Othma Sulivar's stamp visible in faded ink on the flyleaf.
Here the Maathinhold.
Here the mark of Sailor's Crown, and helplessly he began rifling through the pages, searching for marks he might recognize from long-departed friends.
Here Briarcliff, the round face of Erstan Gallis ("Lord and Patron") in his youth captured in cameo inside the front cover, the resemblance to his youngest son uncanny.
Here a whole disheveled pile of tomes marked with the black doors of Nightgate Academy, which stood barely half a mile from this very archive. Ammas imagined the Imperial soldiers trundling wheelbarrows full of stolen volumes across Gallowsport from the academy as it burned, depositing them here with all the care of a farmer dumping a wagonload of offal.
So engrossed was he with this trove of lore that he never noticed the bobbing glow of candlelight until it was practically in his face, the figure holding up its flickering source calling out a challenge.
"Who are you and what are you doing in my ward?" this voice demanded.