Pay attention, the words repeated. You did not need that clumsy spell.

How could they be her own thoughts? She looked around.

Over Beena’s head, two levels up where they were definitely not allowed, a book was on fire. It was quickly spreading along the shelf.

That should help, said the voice.

Instant panic ensued. The closest mages and magians raced toward it, to douse it by whatever magic was available to them.

Pay attention.  

She grabbed at Beena’s hand. Beena twisted to see the fire. Izzi tugged her friend’s hand to win her attention back.

Behind Beena she could see the magical arm of the nasnas, extending, unfolding like it had too many elbows, to bear a bucket up to the fire. This was her chance.

“Trust me,” she whispered. Beena pressed her lips together in doubt and concern, but nodded.

“I was never here,” Izzi said, and curled her fingers into the sigils needed for her mother’s spell of deception. She mouthed the words and watched her hands seem to fray and dissolve like before, until any trace of them was difficult for her to see, even knowing where they were.

Beena’s eyes widened in their deep sockets, and she blinked and shook her head as if to try to bring Izzi back into focus. Then she grinned and lowered herself in her seat, now turning her head more slowly in smiling disapproval. 

Izzi knew her spell could probably be defeated by the magians as Kalu had done, but thought they would need to expect her to be hidden to try, and with them and the nasnas busy with the fire, this was a chance she had to take. She stood and scanned the shelves.

As far as it could be from the burning book, around the circle of the same level, a book on the shelf was glowing. It was unclear whether others would be able to see it, or if it glowed for her eyes alone.

Come to me, called the book, in the same voice that had spoken in her head—calm and even, but so persistent. Izzi knew she should resist, that voices in the head were either deceptive shadow beings of some kind—or just plain ordinary insanity.

Not feeling particularly insane, she wondered if this was not actually some remnant her mother left for her, a spell somehow laid in her own head like an egg that would one day hatch. In any case it did not seem to have done her any harm yet. Avoiding the main way, which would take her past the fire and those trying to extinguish it, Izzi headed to the nearest of the ladders that provided shortcut alternatives to the main ramps, and climbed. She was now above the levels permitted to her, and it was soon clear why. Many of the books and journals here were also calling to her, some with pleading calls, some with louder demands, and still more were actively repelling her with revulsion, or seemed to become invisible as she walked past. One shelf—apparently full on her approach—was entirely empty when she got to it. You clearly needed a lot of magian training to tackle these old books. 

Pay attention, the voice chided. Come to me. Somehow the initial voice cut through the clamour of the others. I contain secrets you need to know, about Kythia, about your mother.

What secrets? What do you know of my mother? She felt crazy, having a conversation with talking voices in her head. But other than her legacy of journals, Myzina had shared so little, and Izzi had been tiny when she died. If there was something she needed to know, it was something she must know.

She raced along to the next ladder, climbed to the target level. 

She dared a look back. The fire was decidedly smaller, the mages were leaning on the railing to catch their breath, and the nasnas’s great arm was lifting its empty bucket away, presumably to magically refill it. She was running out of time.

As she turned back to continue, she ran full into a chair that scraped across the floor with a squawk like a peafowl, then caught in a floorboard and crashed like thunder onto the floor.

She closed her eyes and steeled herself for discovery. After a moment of silence she dared a look back. Amazingly, her deception spell seemed to have worked. Even Beena, two levels down, was not looking up, but concentrating on some book.

Eventually, taking much more care around the furniture, and thankful for the soft padding of her slippers, she made it to the glowing book, and as she looked at it the glowing stopped. After another scan to check for anyone noticing her, she pried it from the shelf, a heavy, mouldering, ancient thing, cloth-bound and shabby.

A Treatise on Kyth Histories, by A. Anakzar.

What secrets did it hold? She manoeuvred it so she could balance its weight in one palm, and was about to turn open the cover. 

Furniture scraped again loudly. Not her this time—the nasnas, peering up from four floors down with its single unblinking eye, was righting the chair she’d knocked over. From the way it fumbled and poked around with its three long fingers, its vision from so far away was clearly poor. With the deception spell it would surely not see her. She kept still, just in case.

But those fingers, driven by some librarian-urge for tidiness, kept coming, squaring up the chairs and tables into magian-worthy order, straightening books on the shelves. They tip-walked closer and closer.

This was clearly not a good opportunity to examine A Treatise on Kyth Histories.

Borrow me, said the book.

Izzi paused for a moment. There was no borrowing of a book such as this. She listed her transgressions: Using an unsanctioned spell in the Grimoiren—a stern lecture. Sneaking above the permitted levels—sent down to acolyte, probably. But stealing a book from the Grimoiren—immediate expulsion, definitely, or worse. She imagined again the cleaned bones of the infiltrating Kyth, and shuddered.

Yet, if they were keeping things from her about Mother, she had to know what they were. She held the book as best she could within the folds of her dress, and headed for the next ladder, quickly, quietly, carefully, and under her spell of deception.