There was an army of books, thousands upon thousands of them, marching in rows along the bookshelves. Within each of those volumes were hundreds of pages, and on each page were hundreds of words. Large high windows admitted shafts of light: great diagonal vessels filled with a swirling miasma of dust. Despite its size, the hall felt musty and close. The smell of leather and beeswax hung in the air as thickly as the dust. Reynik pinched his nose, twitching and rubbing it to try to relieve the itching sensation that had begun the moment he had stepped through the door. When he and Femke had decided this was the most likely avenue for finding proof of the location of the assassins’ lair, he had pictured skimming through a few books and the answers leaping out at him. The reality of the magnitude of his task was overwhelming. One look at the huge walls of books made scouting around the Imperial Palace and counting vents, as Femke had first thought, seem a lot more appealing.
