Quietly she said, “Uncle, what is it? What’s wrong?”

He blew out a gust of air. “Wait for me in the library.”

She studied his face, trying to fathom what troubled him. No hints showed. So she nodded, to him and to Lyode. Then she limped into her house.

The centuries had warped the library door arch beyond simple repair. Kamoj leaned her weight into the door to shove it closed. Inside the library, shelves filled with codices and books covered the walls. The lamp by Maxard’s favorite armchair shed light over a table there. A codex lay on the table, a parchment scroll made from the inner bark of a sunglass tree and painted with gesso, a smooth plaster. Glyphs covered it, delicate symbols inked in Argali colors. Kamoj could decipher none of the writing. But as she took responsibility for Argali, Maxard had more time for his scholarship. He was learning to read.

Behind her the door scraped open, and she turned to see her uncle. With no preamble, he said, “I’ve something to show you.”

Puzzled, Kamoj accompanied him to an arched door in the far wall. The storeroom beyond had once held carpentry tools, but those were long gone, sold by her grandparents to purchase grain. Maxard fished a skeleton key out of his pocket and opened the tanglebirch door. Unexpectedly, oil lamps lit the room beyond. Kamoj stared past him—and gasped.

Urns, boxes, chests, gigantic pots, finely wrought buckets: they all crammed the storeroom full to overflowing. Gems filled baskets, heaped like fruits, spilling onto the floor, diamonds that split the light into rainbows, emeralds as brilliant as the eyes of a greenglass, rose-rubies the size of fists, sapphires, topazes, amethysts, cats-eyes, jade, turquoise. She walked forward, and her foot kicked an opal the size of a polestork egg. It rolled across the floor and hit a bar of metal.