Anluan’s library was the most chaotic place I’d ever had the ill luck to stumble into. It was a sizable chamber. Several big tables would have made useful work surfaces had they not been heaped high with documents, scrolls and loose leaves of parchment. This fragile material was strewn about apparently at random. Around the walls stood sundry chests and smaller tables, their tops as heavily laden as those of their larger counterparts. I suspected every receptacle would reveal, on opening, a welter of entangled materials.

I walked in, not saying a word. There were glazed windows all along the western side of the chamber. In the afternoons the light would be excellent for writing.

“The things you’ll need are in that oak chest,” said Magnus, pointing to the far end of the chamber. “Pens, powders for ink and so on. He said even if you’ve brought your own, they’ll run out quickly. There’s a good stock of parchment, enough for the job, he thinks. If you need more of anything we can get it, but to be honest I’d rather not have the trouble.”

I eyed the disorder around me, trying hard to view it not as an obstacle but as a challenge.“What exactly is it I’m supposed to do here? Is Lord Anluan going to explain it to me himself?” A family of scholars, Magnus had said. I thought of the very detailed instructions Father and I had received for our commissions, the minute attention some of our customers had paid to the niceties of execution. “Where is the material I have to transcribe?”

And when Magnus just looked at me, then cast his gaze around to take in the entire chamber, long scrolls, thick bound books, tiny fragments, loose bundles of parchment sheets, I felt hysterical laughter welling up in my throat.

“All of this?” I choked.“In a single summer? What does this man think I am, a miracle worker?”