She went straight for the room across the hallway, the one with the double doors. She pushed one door open and stepped inside. Her taper revealed walls of books, gold gilt titles on the bindings winking in the light. A library, then. A long heavy table gleamed in the middle of the room, stacked with a few volumes, and a fireplace yawned black and sooty on the far wall. Rain pelted at heavily draped windows.
She glanced at a few titles: The Complete Compendium of Archeological Implements, Pride of Empire, and The Wonderful Realm of Abstract Mathematical Intangibilities. She supposed if she looked further, she’d find history books on the empire, but they’d probably be propaganda from all she’d heard about the “true history” so far. They might be interesting, but probably would not illuminate what had really happened to her Sacoridia and the free lands.
As tempting as it was to linger and look through books, she thought her time would be better spent prowling. She backed out of the library, softly closing the door. Back in the foyer, she paused, listening. Except for the distant sound of falling rain, the house remained sepulchral in demeanor.
She forged ahead, trying to shake off comparisons with tombs, and almost immediately found a privy just as extravagant as the one upstairs, but this one had a bird’s nest theme. The bowl looked like a nest, supported by branches of brass. Tempted though she was, she did not pull the lever to learn what came out from the trap door above to fill the bowl with water.
She hastened on and found a dining room that attached to the parlor through a doorway. A crystal chandelier glinted in her light above the immense, polished table. She found a pantry and stuck her head into the kitchen but did not investigate.
Down an austere side passage, she found storage rooms full of draped furniture, chests, and lamps missing shades. She hoped not to accidentally open a door to the servants quarters. Mirriam, who was exalted above all as head housekeeper, got a room in the plush upstairs. The rest of the servants would be housed in more utilitarian quarters. Still, she did not have a sense of anyone sleeping or otherwise inhabiting this corridor.
The next door she opened proved more interesting, for she found a very messy and cluttered office. She stepped inside and marveled at the piles of paper and stacks of books rising like columns almost to the ceiling. There was something of a path to a chair and desk, likewise buried in paper and books. The black eye sockets of a horse’s skull peeked out from a shelf crowded with books and rolled documents. A rusted dagger sat on a pile like a paperweight. Here and there shovels and pick axes leaned against a bookstack. Some were buried up to their handles. She saw no sign of her own belongings, but there was no way to tell if they were buried anywhere in this clutter.
Karigan thought that if the professor wished to conduct archeological excavations, he should begin with his own office. She dared not touch anything for fear it would all come crashing down on her. Across his desk a map lay unrolled, but she could not make sense of it with its gridwork of numbers, transects, and layers.
She froze when she heard a door open and close somewhere else in the house. She wondered what to do—hide, or stay where she was? What if it was the professor coming to work late in his office?
She hastily lowered the light of the taper to a dim glow. She headed for the door, brushed against a stack of books, and watched in horror as they listed precariously. She gritted her teeth and tried to steady them so they would not topple, but the stack was over-balanced and fell, taking out the stack behind it, and another.
The noise was like thunder, and she flung herself out of the room, across the hall, and into one of the storage rooms. So much for her stealthy sojourn. If they discovered her, she’d be banned from leaving her room ever. Not that she’d let them stop her.
Hurried footsteps came down the corridor. She extinguished the taper entirely so no hint of light leaked through the crack at the bottom of the door. There was a second set of footsteps, and she opened the door just the tiniest bit. She saw the professor’s back, and Mirriam’s, each of them holding a taper.
“What in the world?” Mirriam demanded. She wore a plaid housecoat over her nightgown and a bonnet over her hair. The professor was attired in what looked like formal evening wear, as if he’d just returned from a party.
“It appears,” he said, “one of my bookstacks gave way, leading to a chain reaction.”
“I’ve warned you many times, Professor, that it is dangerous in there—a death trap! A whisper could’ve knocked those books over. What if you’d been in there? We’d be sending for Mender Samuels is what.”
“Then a good thing I was not.”
“I guess we’ll have to set it right in the morning, then,” Mirriam said with a mournful note in her voice.
“No, no,” the professor said. “I’ll let the boys handle it. What are first year students for anyway? You go back to bed and don’t worry one iota about it.”
“If you’re sure . . .”
“I’m sure. Go back to bed.”
Dismissed, Mirriam retreated down the hall. The professor continued gazing at the mess in his office, tugging at his bushy side whiskers.
“And my night’s just beginning,” he grumbled, and he shook his head.
Karigan expected him to make some attempt at straightening his office, but he turned and walked away. She did not hesitate but slipped out of the storage room to follow him, keeping to the darkness, away from the halo of light emitted by his taper.
He swept past the kitchen and pantry area, past the dining room, and veered into the library, leaving one of the double doors ajar. By the time Karigan reached the doors and peered inside, she discovered he’d left his taper at dim glow on the main table, but he was gone. Vanished.