Chapter 11 Kasira
KASIRA
THE DAYS OF STUDYING HAD THE EFFECT KASIRA DESIRED: MOST OF the mages no longer stared at her with the same narrow-eyed suspicion, having grown used to her presence.
It helped that she had taken over the feeding for Benlo and other beasts, joining those who went in and out of the paddocks each morning, while the others did everything from grooming to exercising them.
It was almost idyllic, the steady buzz of conversation and laughter amid the roar of the falls, but Kasira couldn’t quell the current of unease that always surfaced around the beasts.
After so many years spent fighting for her life against them, her instinct was to put a blade in their hearts before they could attack.
Thankfully, that disquiet translated into her persona as Eirlana, who would feel equally discomforted walking between the pens.
It was an element of her con she didn’t have to fake.
She needed it to look like Eirlana was making an effort, and she did so by forcing herself to make one.
She tended to pens of Yrvas, great lizard-like creatures with curved snouts that spent most of their time in swamps.
They had long, thin tails, sharp as vylor blades, one of which had nearly taken her hand off when she startled it in the woods.
The paddock beside the Yrvas’ was full of Fiers, small and quick creatures with curved claws on their front paws and straight, ridged horns the length of their bodies.
Revna had a scar on her thigh from one that had nearly skewered her.
The beasts had infiltrated their camp during the night, killing two medics.
Kasira might not hate beasts with the same religious fervor as her countrymen, but she could understand their fear.
Nowhere else did people face such a high density of dangerous creatures.
Nowhere else was it as common to meet an orphan of an attack as a happy family.
Nowhere else did a kingdom need a force whose sole purpose was protection from beasts, instead of relying on the Library for aid.
Beasts might not be the sins the church claimed, but they were certainly no blessing.
Everything Kasira did she reported back to Vera via the communication channel they had established: notes placed in a forgotten book.
A compendium of some sort, it was two fists thick and twice as useless, as it was written almost entirely in a lost Avari language.
A quality which also made it the perfect place to hide letters for the spy to retrieve.
By now, she had decided the incident in Allaster’s office meant that his abilities didn’t enable him to constantly know where she was, but that he likely had to actively seek her out.
It was a risk to operate on that assumption without more proof, but if she didn’t, her movements would be severely limited.
She had just circled back past the Yrvas, nearing the end of her rounds, when a loud snap startled one near the fence.
It spun, long tail lashing like a whip toward her abdomen.
Kasira had dropped the feed bucket, dodged the tail, and drawn Revna’s blade from her boot before she realized what was happening.
Elyae stood across the pen, a broken stick in hand.
Kasira tried to hide the blade, but it was clear from the girl’s expression that she had seen it, her lips curving with a satisfied smile.
Kasira had dedicated the past two weeks to proving she was not a threat, but not-threats didn’t carry knives and resort to brandishing them at beasts at the slightest movement.
Kasira forced a neutral tone when she asked, “Elyae, isn’t it?”
“An Assistant Librarian can’t be afraid of beasts,” Elyae said in a light Ayadese accent as she approached. “An Assistant Librarian whose first response is to attack one can’t be an Assistant Librarian.”
Kasira returned the blade to her boot. “And who would make a better one? You?”
Elyae stiffened, a strange emotion passing behind her black eyes. May’s words came back to Kasira: Elyae has always wanted more responsibility than she has. That was the look in the girl’s eyes: jealousy.
Did Elyae want to be the Assistant Librarian?
“You can never have my place,” Kasira continued with Eirlana’s surety, seeking confirmation. “The next Librarian will be Kalish. There is no way around that.”
Elyae let out a rueful laugh. “Isn’t there?” She closed the distance between them impossibly fast, pinning Kasira up against the pen with a knife to her throat.
Kasira smothered the reflex to disarm her.
When someone held a weapon to you, nine times out of ten, they had no intention of killing you—at least not before getting whatever they actually wanted first. So Kasira let the blade stay, and let her face reflect Eirlana’s fear and confusion, searching for help.
But Elyae had timed her confrontation well. They were alone.
“I don’t know what you said to May to get her on your side,” Elyae began in a low hiss, “but the rest of us won’t be so easily fooled.”
“Need I remind you that I am the Assistant Librarian?” Kasira asked imperiously. Eirlana Corynth might not be accustomed to her role at the Library, but she would be used to being afforded the respect an elevated position granted her.
A sneer cut across Elyae’s face. “Even you can’t say it with a straight face.
You weren’t sent here to become the next Assistant; you were sent here to spy for Kalthos.
That’s why Allaster hasn’t fully named you yet, and without magic, you don’t stand a chance against me.
So listen closely when I tell you that whatever it is you intend to do, I will stop you. ”
Carefully, as though it were only an accident, Kasira used one fingertip to send a small journal in Elyae’s pocket tumbling to the ground.
Sure enough, the girl’s gaze tracked it.
She leaned fractionally closer, growling softly, “Your days here are numbered, beast slayer.” Then she swept down to pick up the journal, tucking it carefully back into her pocket as she departed.
Kasira watched her go. There were some people whom you tried to convince of your persona, people whom you could build a story for that they would listen to; and then there were those who had made up their mind long before your performance began.
Those were the ones who could destroy everything.
KASIRA WENT STRAIGHT to the main library, where she asked a leopard spirit for help finding books about Amorlin’s internal processes, in particular the rotation of Librarians.
A group of leopards arrived at her table several minutes later, each depositing a book.
It didn’t take long to find her answers.
Amorlin: A Library Guide covered the basics.
The role of Librarian rotated between the six realms, each taking on an Assistant who would eventually replace them.
It had since been modified to remove Avaria from the cycle, though if the kingdom ever reopened communications with the rest of the continent, it would be immediately reinstated.
The book went quickly through a summary of the Library’s powers, from authority over beasts and all things magic, to the special protections and immunities granted to the Librarian and their mages. It was not until she reached the information on the Conclave that she found what she was looking for.
She already knew a Librarian could be removed and replaced with their successor only by a majority vote from the Conclave.
What Vera hadn’t told her was that the same could be done to an Assistant.
If Kasira was found to be committing any of the same crimes she intended to set up Allaster for, she would be removed from her position, and an Assistant from the next country would be chosen.
With Avaria’s doors closed, that meant Ayador.
Elyae was doing to her exactly what Kasira was doing to Allaster.
It almost made her laugh. The girl was certainly more forthright about her intentions, her first move lacking any cleverness, but it was effective nonetheless.
She would do it again over the coming days, finding ways to make Kasira look dangerous, or inept, or like the very spy Allaster suspected her to be.
It didn’t matter how many beasts Kasira fed if Elyae gave Allaster the fuel he needed to see her removed from her position before she even had magic.
If she didn’t do something about Elyae soon, the girl would ruin everything.
“Lana?” May stood over her, face lined with the sort of disappointment that told her Elyae had already been to see the First Mage.
She had a book on beast diets tucked under one arm and dried remnants of dough along her fingers that suggested she’d been baking earlier, something Kasira had learned that May did to relieve stress.
Kasira reflexively sank into her chair, portraying a remorse that wasn’t entirely false.
Something about the way May was looking at her actually made Kasira feel genuinely guilty, an emotion she carefully folded within a mental fist and crushed.
Perhaps she had let herself get too close to May these past few days.
“I’m sorry,” Kasira said. “I panicked. The Yrvas—one nearly killed me.”
May sat across from her, setting down her book and neatly folding her hands atop it. “Tell me what you know about them.”
Kasira didn’t respond right away, unsure what sort of test this was. If she told the truth, she would sound prejudiced, just when she had been presenting the image of changing. If she feigned ignorance, her reaction would look unjustified.
“I know they can raise the scales on their tales into sharpened ridges,” she said, deciding to stick with simple facts. “And that they live mostly on the banks of swamps, where the mud keeps them cool.”
“Do you know what they use their tails for?” May pressed, clearly seeking a certain answer.
Kasira gave it to her. “Defense?”
“Security,” May corrected. “They live in small groups, one extended family to a swamp. Because they spend so much time exposed on the banks, they have high startle reflexes, a trait that gives them the ability to react to threats and get back in the water quickly. Their tails have evolved in length to allow each Yrva their own cooling space, while still enabling them to seize any young around them and pull them into the water. Yrva without offspring will often grab the tails or legs of other Yrva, each one helping the next back into the swamp.”
Now she saw where this was going—it was the same lesson Allaster had tried to impart with Benlo.
What she saw as weapons and aggression, the Library claimed had another purpose.
Some part of Kasira knew that already. The part that had grown up curious about beasts and been the one to question these things, only to have her voice silenced.
Somewhere along the way, she had stopped asking questions.
“Are you saying the Yrva was trying to … protect me?” she asked.
“That’s correct.”
Eirlana wouldn’t know what to make of that, and in truth, Kasira didn’t either. The idea sat with her strangely, a splinter beneath her skin.
May scooted back her chair and held out her hand. “The blade, please.”
Kasira considered palming it and professing she had no such thing, but this was an opportunity to establish another level of trust. The mages respected and listened to May; her opinion of Kasira could decide the fate of her con, which made keeping May on her side just as important as earning Allaster’s trust. Besides, if she willingly gave it up, May would tell Allaster, and perhaps it would be enough to balance out Elyae’s maneuver.
So she handed the knife to May, who retrieved her book and bid her good night.
Kasira spent the rest of the evening with a pot of tea, researching every beast she had ever encountered in the Malikinar.
It didn’t take long to notice the pattern.
The Yrva she had surprised in the woods all those years ago had likely only been reaching for young.
Fiers, with their curved claws and long, sharp horns, lived mostly underground.
They only attacked in defense of their homes, which was why a group of them had infiltrated her Malikinar camp—they had set up their tents atop a colony.
It was the section on Alkatir that truly gave her pause though.
According to the book, they were highly intelligent creatures capable of understanding human speech.
Outside of Kalthos, there wasn’t a single documented case of one attacking a human, and the book noted the Kalish reports were probably doctored to cover attacks initiated by Malik.
She thought of the cub she had left alive—its wing broken and its eye ruined.
If these books were right, if her knowledge of beasts was truly so fundamentally flawed that she had seen violence where only fear had existed, then she had fallen much further from her promise to Loraya than she had realized.
She had let fear take root inside her, let it wrap its thorny vines about her heart.
And if she gave the Library to Vera, the Ambassador would do the same to the rest of the world.