Outside, the morning market was loud and chaotic. Vendors shouted over each other, fishmongers waved yesterday's catch, bread sellers swore their loaves were fresh. Mae kept her head down and her eyes moving.
She ignored the stares and the catcalls. She had one thing to find: a library.
After stopping a few locals who looked at her like she'd spoken another language, someone finally pointed her toward a squat building wedged between two alleys. The Crinkle Curb Library.
They must hit her the moment she pushes inside. Old paper, wood smoke, dust. The door creaked shut behind her. Narrow windows let in thin slats of light that barely reached the floor. Books spilled off every shelf, some stacked in towers that touched the ceiling.
She ducked a cobweb, swatted it out of her hair with a small squeal, and started moving through the shelves.
She pulled a book at random and cracked it open. She looked at the words and paused for a long moment.
The letters were unreadable. Coiling, twisted symbols that meant nothing. She could hear everyone around her speak perfectly, but this was completely foreign.
"I can't read this," she hissed.
"Perhaps because language can bend," a voice said behind her. "But writing is loyal to time." She spun.
A tall man stood there, white-bearded, in robes the color of old parchment, eyes dark and ageless. She hadn't heard a single footstep. The book slipped from her fingers. He caught it before it hit the ground, dusted it gently, and tucked it under his arm like an old friend.
"Welcome to the Crinkle Curb Library. How may I help you?"
Mae swallowed. "I just needed a book." "Anything in particular?"
She grabbed the nearest one off the shelf. "This one. Yes. Exactly what I was looking for."
She turned to set it on a table, and when she turned back, he was closer than before.
Her breath caught. "Are you sure that's the one?" he asked, quiet and unhurried.
Mae cracked. "I need a map."
He raised one eyebrow. "The only people who come asking for maps are fugitives." A pause. "Or spies."
"I have an interest in geography," she said quickly. "Topography. Rivers."
"Interesting," he said. "But you can't read."
"I can read. Just not this language. What is it even called?"
He tilted his head. "Are you from outside the continent?" She nodded before she could think of a lie.
"Then you're far from home." He turned, his cloak whispering across the stone floor. "If you want to read our script, I can help. That'll cost you three glints."
"Three glints?" She nearly choked. "That's a week of meals."
"Are you expecting an entire education for three glints?"
"And you will, in return, be able to read, so it sounds like a fair deal, miss," he said, pressing.
She didn't like the sound of that at all. He sounded like a scam, but she had no choice, did she? "Okay, what is it?"
He reached into his robes and rummaged for what felt like an entire minute, clinking and shuffling through things she couldn't see. When he finally pulled his hand out, he was holding a single circular lens on a delicate copper handle.
Mae stared at it. "I'm not blind. I just can't read your alphabet."
He sighed, stepped forward, and fitted the lens over her right eye with surprising gentleness, hooking it behind her ear. Then he opened a book and held it in front of her face. "Read."
She looked. The symbols shimmered. Twisted. Then snapped into clean, readable words like a key turning in a lock.
"The Kingdom of Elareth, founded in the Year of First Flame, remains the oldest—" She stopped. "I can read it."
"A rune-translation lens," he said. "Old invention. Most nobles have forgotten they exist."
"So I'm literate now?"
"The lens is literate. You're borrowing its intelligence."
"How long does it last?"
"Until you take it off."
She dropped three glints into his palm. He nodded once.
Then vanished. Just gone, between one blink and the next.
Mae stared at the empty air. "Did he seriously just disappear after making a sale?"
She stood there a moment, then sat down on the floor beside the nearest shelf and started pulling books into her lap.
The lens made the pages glow faintly, and she realized quickly it wasn't just translating. It was simplifying, filtering dense text into something clear and digestible. She read through the political history of Elareth, its long rivalry with the Kingdom of Wisterland, the geography of the continent, and scattered references to magic, real, documented magic, woven into the world like weather.
She was so absorbed she didn't notice the sun moving until her back gave out with a painful crack.
She looked up. Gold light slanted through the windows. Dusk already.
She closed the book, removed the lens, and tucked it into her satchel. When she stood and turned, the man was behind her again, silent as a dropped shadow.
She jumped. "You need to stop doing that."
He said nothing. Just held out a folded piece of parchment.
"What's this?"
"A map."
She narrowed her eyes. "How much?"
"Call it a gift." She waited for the catch. He was already gone, slipping behind the shelves without a sound, not even dust stirring where he'd stood.
Mae looked at the empty space for a moment, then tucked the map into her bag and walked out into the amber evening.
"I need to sell the other earring," she muttered, pulling her cloak tighter. "And maybe find a dagger. Or one of those magic artifacts the books mentioned. Anything to keep me from being murdered in my sleep?" She had learned it the hard way the night before, when the door of her room kept being almost smashed.
She passed fruit carts and barking dogs and half-asleep vendors shouting end-of-day prices. She didn't notice the footsteps behind her.
Someone had been behind her since morning.