Speaker and Calligrapher | Vida Cruz-Borja
SPEAKER AND
CALLIGRAPHER
By
VIDA CRUZ-BORJA
There he is, my lady,” Agreha whispered conspiratorially, just low enough for Verda to catch. “Handsome as always!”
Verda’s gaze darted toward the far end of the buzzy marble-tiled dining hall, toward the young man in question.
Lin of Quarendell: tall, long and wavy brown hair that looked fashionably windblown on him and unkempt on anyone else, easy smile framed by a light scruff that elicited swoons and sighs from all sorts of admirers.
Striking eyes, purple as the sky at twilight.
Well-mannered, well-spoken – horribly glib at times, really – and unfortunately for Verda, the best calligrapher in all the Library.
Probably all of Vanserai, in her begrudging estimation.
He knew it, too; worse, he didn’t seem to care.
In fact, he cared more that Verda cared.
“Now’s your chance to speak with him,” Agreha prodded.
“I would rather drink spell ink,” Verda said, feeling her resolve in the set of her teeth. “Or go head-to-head with an escaped chimera. Alone.”
Agreha wrinkled her pert little nose in distaste.
As Verda’s lady-in-waiting, she was all too aware of their dynamic and had repeatedly expressed that it was beyond her comprehension.
“That may be so, but you need him to collaborate on your proposal, don’t you?
Archivist Sormen said so at your consultation yesterday. ”
Verda paused, cursing how she ever thought she could advance her own logomancy by just focusing on speaking Aarakese at the expense of writing it. Oh, she could just kick her younger self. “That he did.”
“And your lord father said that it was now or never, didn’t he?” Agreha added, her voice like a nudge in the shoulders.
According to Duke Belegdani’s last letter, since the Head Librarian had announced that the successorship test would only happen this year, it was indeed now or never – and if never, she would be returning home for good and getting married off to whoever her father chose.
Such was the usual fate of any duke’s child except the first (she was the sixth); she’d only been able to delay it by parlaying her chances at the position of Head Librarian and connecting it to Duke Belegdani’s political gain.
Verda’s hands slapped the table stingingly as she rose from the bench. “Fine.”
“Excellent!” Agreha pounded her palm with her fist. “I’ll have someone wrap up your breakfast so you can eat it later. Good luck, my lady!”
Verda walked – stalked, really – toward Lin and the wall of tittering admirers both male and female. He really was a good head taller than the tallest of them, so stupidly tall that she had to crane her neck to meet his eyes during every diatribe.
Lin hadn’t seen her approach yet. To her horror, after he gave the crowd a little wave and disengaged, he turned to leave. Lin’s stupidly long stride would quickly take him to one of the side doors out of the hall. Gods forbid the entire Library should witness her chasing after him!
“L-Lin!” Verda called – half a summons, half a declaration of war. Her feet staggered to the beat of her stutter.
Lin froze in his tracks. He spun around, searching. When his twilight eyes locked on her sunrise ones, surprise lit them up. He didn’t keep walking, at least.
“This is the first time you’ve ever called me by my name, Snowflake,” he commented with a kind of dry awe as she came within earshot. “What’s the occasion? Think I dumped vinegar on your omelette?”
“Ooh, look who’s testy. Someone steal your shampoo again, Pretty Boy?
” The words were out of Verda’s mouth before she had time to think.
She clapped her palms to her cheeks, shook her head.
With all her being, she ignored the tingle of the blush coloring her entire face and the small crowd birthing new rumors at her back. “We should talk some where private.”
* * *
Verda hadn’t thought there’d be a more chilling sound than the click of the vault door’s mechanism locking behind them – that was, until she heard the gravelly rumble of stone on stone. Skreeeek. Skreeeek. Skreeeek. Slow. Methodical. Like foot steps belonging to some thing big.
She unsheathed her shortsword, for all the good it would do. Beside her, Lin loaded his crossbow. A thick cord of silence wound between them, taut and ready to choke.
The Head Librarian successorship test had two parts: the practical exam and the proposal presentation.
For the practical exam, all candidates had been informed ahead of time that they’d be facing a replica of the kind of sentinel golem that once guarded the vaults of the royal palace in Aarakarsh – yet they weren’t allowed to destroy it, no; just disable it.
It was a test of their finesse, considering how many of the artifacts being re-discovered at various dig sites were highly dangerous – but ultimately worth studying if humanity was to relearn the art of logomancy.
They’d been allowed to take with them a partner of their choice; one weapon; and a small leather spell pouch with a notebook, a quill pen, a reed pen, and one bottle each of only two inks: lampblack and cinnabar.
Black for quickness. Red for complexity.
Understandable choices, but not nearly enough for this task – even throwing in verdigris or orpiment or lead white would have been comforting, despite the handling risks.
Black and red couldn’t even be mixed to create other colors. It was truly a test of wits.
The vault in question looked like any other warren of Reading Rooms in the Library of Vanserai, except that its bookshelves were arranged more like the walls of a maze than in any order that bespoke a cataloguing system.
It was also dimmer, with no windows and few lanterns, its farthest ends bathed in shadows.
Out of those shadows emerged the sentinel golem.
Carved from prime red granite and terminating in hands and feet of iron, its surface was chiseled with some of the finest calligraphic spell circles the field of logomancy had to offer – a deadly work of art.
Looming over them at nine feet tall, its limbs and torso were as wide as wine barrels.
One punch or kick would be enough to deal more than a concussion and a few broken bones.
However, its most worrisome feature was the hunk of clear quartz crystal bulging from the center of its chest, glowing brighter and more mesmerizing by the second.
According to Verda’s scant readings about sentinel golems from the Aarakarsh empire, she had a five-second window to turn and run during this charging period when the golem’s head swiveled in their direction, its quartz crystal eyes locking onto their target.
The next window would come in about a minute.
Only problem was, her body didn’t understand the assignment. An ice bath of fear washed over her.
“Verda!”
Before she knew it, the cold of the marble floor was seeping through the back of her robes, in stark contrast to Lin’s warmth permeating through the front. She was on the ground, pinned beneath him.
For the briefest of moments, in the smallest of gestures, she reached up to clutch his sleeves with trembling hands, intending to pull him closer.
To envelop herself in the sudden safety of his warm, muscular body.
To drown in the deep purple twilight of his eyes.
What a reversal of the time she’d found him shipwrecked and unconscious on the shore of Crescent Bay.
But then the stench of burnt fabric stung her nostrils, redirecting the flow of her attention. The blood-red velvet carpet now had a black burn mark sizzling where she had once stood. The same burn mark was mirrored in the hem of Lin’s robe. Crossbow bolts were scattered all around them.
“We gotta go!” Lin scrambled off her and stretched out his hand to pull her to her feet. When Verda clasped his wrist, he let out a muffled yelp. His wrist was sprained.
Well, shit.
They ran, Verda grabbing her sword and Lin grabbing three bolts as they fled.
* * *
They’d claimed a windowless, empty lecture hall on the second floor.
It was six rows high and shaped like a half-moon.
Verda took a seat in the fifth row while Lin opted to pace as she explained her proposal to him.
To her consternation, as she finished, he broke down in laughter, his guffaws echoing around the room.
“I have a condition, Snowflake.” Lin’s accent sawed off Serainese’s rough edges and replaced them with posh, rounded consonants. He wiped a tear from his eye, then repositioned himself atop the teacher’s table, one leg crossed over the other. He resembled a king on a throne.
Verda felt her eyebrows were going to shoot past her hairline. “Let’s hear it, Pretty Boy.”
Lin held up a wagging finger and said, “I would like to dine at Artivisi’s after you’ve presented your proposal to the Council.”
Verda inhaled sharply. Artivisi’s was the most expensive establishment in Vanserai, not least because they imported meats like venison and veal and specialized in at least six ways of cooking them.
Depending on what Lin ordered, a whole month’s salary for a senior librarian and the additional allowance from Duke Belegdani would be gone like a dust devil in the desert.
“Isn’t there somewhere else you’d prefer to dine?”
Lin shrugged. “If you don’t like that, then I’ll settle for a long and flowery paragraph praising me in the acknowledgments of the final report you’ll be submitting to the Council. At least five sentences long.”
“… Fine, you exceedingly vain peacock. Artivisi’s it is,” Verda said through gritted teeth. For some reason, treating Lin to a meal that would make her wallet cry was more palatable than that. “And does that apply whether or not I am named Head Librarian?”