Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Rijes snorted. “I am an inconvenience, a stray bit of business that has slipped between the cracks of our new bureaucracy.” She then let out a heavy sigh, revealing a tiredness that Marin hadn’t seen in the grand woman before.
Her voice held a bitter note. “They have no legal grounds to hold me. I have violated no laws. I simply refuse to cooperate with their demands, and that has left them flummoxed.” She lowered herself to sit on the sole chair in the room.
Marin noted it was not unlike a prison cell: a single flat bed with a thin blanket, a sink in one corner, and a single chair.
She didn’t see any books, which felt like a cruelty for a librarian.
“May we ask what those demands are?” Dax asked.
“In the initial days of the uprising, I secured as many tomes as I could in protected vaults within the Great Library, but the vaults aren’t vast enough to protect all the many hundreds of thousands of volumes in our care, and so I permitted my librarians to take as many books and scrolls as they could and flee Alyssium, to protect the knowledge and the stories within from destruction.
The provisional government would like those books back.
” She folded her hands on her lap, looking as if she were in her office in the magnificent library, not in an unlabeled cell in a random government building.
“It is perhaps my own fault. I know how quickly a revolution can turn to chaos, no matter how justified the violence or how well-intentioned its instigators, and so I acted to secure the Crescent Islands’ greatest treasure: its past and its future. ”
“It sounds like you were doing your job,” Marin said. “I don’t understand why they’re holding you for that. Or why here, in a ‘classified’ location.” It would be easy for someone to disappear from a place like this. She tried not to shudder visibly.
“I was indeed doing my job,” Rijes said, “and they agree I was.” She leveled a look at the blank wall.
“Where we disagree is that they claim it’s also my job to recall those books that were taken for their protection.
I believe that until the new government has proven its stability, the books are safer in the hands of my librarians, wherever they may be. ”
“But you haven’t violated any laws?” Dax pressed.
“I have not,” Rijes agreed. A faint smile touched her lips.
“But I have been uncooperative.” She raised her voice.
“Haven’t I, Senira?” She lowered her voice again to a normal volume.
“It frustrates them. They believe it undermines them, though it does not. I have no issue with their control of the government. In fact, I fully support it. But my loyalty remains with the safety of the books.”
“But … they agreed that’s your job,” Marin said. “To protect the books.”
“I have argued this,” Rijes said placidly.
“I have also argued that I am no longer the head of the Great Library, and it is not my responsibility to recall the librarians. I have served my term, and I have chosen to retire and pursue other interests. Let my successor handle the aftermath of the changes to our world.” It was amazing how regal she managed to be while held against her will and stripped of all the trappings of her rank. She exuded confidence from her pores.
Dax shook his head. “I truly don’t understand what right they have to imprison you here.”
Rijes shot another look at the wall. “They argue it’s not a prison. I am simply here for questioning. However, because the government is so busy, they have not had time to devote to questioning me. And so I mostly wait.”
“If you aren’t actually under arrest, why can’t you leave?” Marin asked. Surely, the new government wasn’t in favor of holding innocent people against their will. That was the kind of thing the revolutionaries had fought against.
“If I left without permission, then they would have grounds to arrest me, for not cooperating with official business.”
Rijes really had fallen into a bureaucratic limbo, as the librarian on the dock had said. “How long have you been here?” Marin asked, appalled.
“Ten days and eight hours,” Rijes said. “I would track the minutes as well, but as you can see, there is no timepiece in the room. I am forced to track the days’ time through the progression of sunlight through the window. This has proven tedious.”
“They can’t just keep you here forever,” Marin objected. “It’s absurd.”
“Government is full of absurdity,” Rijes said. “It’s its defining feature, regardless of whose government it is.”
Dax shifted closer to Marin, as if to show his support. Or seek it. “Can’t we appeal to someone? If the appropriate people knew, surely they wouldn’t allow this to be happening.”
“If you know the appropriate people to speak to, I would be grateful. However, there is so much not yet settled that it’s unclear who is even in charge.
That is the essence of my problem—there seems to be no one with the authority to release me, or perhaps no one who wants the responsibility of deciding to release me. It is, as you said, absurd.”
Marin was certain Dax didn’t know anyone outside the conservatory, much less anyone in the new government.
She certainly didn’t. It was a long shot to think they’d be able to reach anyone who could help Rijes.
Maybe if they went back to the library, one of the librarians could help?
Except they hadn’t done so yet, and the librarian they’d spoken to said they kept hitting dead ends.
We’ve already gotten further than they have.
“I am not a priority,” Rijes Velk said. “That is the issue. I am not important enough to catch the attention of anyone with a high enough level of authority to either decide to detain or release me. Under the empire, it would have fallen to the imperial investigators, but they have been disbanded. So here I wait. Pointlessly.” The last word was aimed at the wall again.
Imperial investigators, gone? That was an extraordinary change. She tried to wrap her mind around that and failed. “Why not just give them what they want?” Marin asked.
“Because I can’t,” Rijes said placidly. “I don’t know where the librarians went.
Furthermore, I don’t care. The books will be well cared for, and they will be out with the people, instead of hidden and hoarded within the library.
They will be read and used. I love the idea of little libraries throughout the Crescent Islands, accessible to the people, not only the elite …
which is the opinion that led to my confinement here.
The official who initially questioned me did not believe that I didn’t know the locations of my librarians, given my views. ”
“So you’re stuck,” Marin said.
“The empire was unjust, but it was effective,” Rijes said. “Now, with the government being reshaped and laws rewritten…” She smiled wryly. “I am paperwork that no one wants to do. It is, in a way, impressive in its implacable inefficiency.”
She could languish here forever, caught in limbo.
Marin studied the wall where the official was presumably listening in.
She couldn’t go back to Terlu Perna and tell her that she’d found Rijes but she was imprisoned indefinitely.
But what could she do about it? She had no contacts in Alyssium who would have any sway in a situation like this.
She wasn’t even a resident. She was just a supply runner, and this was beyond anything she was equipped to deal with.
“How likely do you think it is that your grandmasters would be able to help?” she asked Dax.
“I … I don’t believe they would,” Dax said. “They don’t involve themselves in politics. It’s how they protect the conservatory. When Grandmaster Vorac gave me the letter, he was clear that this was the limit of their involvement.”
Marin did have one idea.
It wasn’t an idea she liked.
She tried to think of any other option. She couldn’t just leave Rijes here.
How could I return to Ree and Perri and tell them that?
How could I face Terlu? How could I face myself?
She admired Rijes Velk. Liked her even. She couldn’t walk away.
That left her one terrible idea. Marin knocked on the wall.
“Senira? I have a question for you. Could you return, please?”
There was a shuffling from the other side of the wall. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, she would have laughed. As it was, she felt her stomach churning. There was no good outcome here for her. But there was, at least, the chance to do good.
“Marin?” Dax asked.
She ignored him. He wasn’t going to approve of this. Frankly, she didn’t approve of it either. But … she rather thought her parents might. And her own conscience, which was pretty much the same thing.
A half minute later, the door opened, and the official entered.
“You said that they’d dock your pay if you let her go,” Marin said to Senira.
“Can you be…” She wanted to use the word “bribed.” “… compensated for your loss?” She pulled out the pouch with every bit they’d earned from singing at the docks.
She knew as it opened that it wouldn’t be nearly enough. “Will this cover the penalty?”
He snorted. “Not nearly.”
She didn’t think it would, but she noted that he did not say he wouldn’t accept compensation. Marin dug the heartsinger ruby out of her pocket—
“Marin, no,” Dax whispered.
She held it up to Senira, flat on her palm, catching the light, and said to Dax, “Either I use it to free Rijes, or I return it to Terlu and admit I failed. Either way, I can’t keep it.
” She’d have to find another way to save her parents from Iovar’s petty vengeance.
She’d take as many jobs from the Alyssium job board as she could, and maybe if she paid enough of the debt … I’ll find a solution. Somehow.
She couldn’t just leave Rijes here. That was a fact.
Senira was gawking at the ruby. “Is that—”
“It is.”