The day had gone on far longer than Ismene planned. She'd spent hours talking with Eryx, and then, conspiring on how to keep Harmonia happy. Finally, she made it up to her room with another novel.

  Ismene turned the lever-shaped handle, and the door opened for her. Inside, in front of the great window, a Hand was just placing a covered dish on a central table. They turned to her.

  "May I help you with anything else?" they asked.

  "No, thank you." Ismene said. "You brought me dinner again?" she asked.

  "Of course," the Hand said. They stayed where they were. "Is it sufficient?"

  Ismene winced. "Of course! I'm sorry, I just—usually we're supposed to ask, and this is the second time—" She caught her breath and reined in her anxiety. "Thank you. You always give us very good hospitality. I'm grateful for it. It must be a lot of work, and I'm thankful," she said.

  "We enjoy having company," the Hand said blankly.

  "You, the Hands?" Ismene said, curious. She was beginning to think that something was different this visit. The Hands were never so... solicitous. Helpful? Interested, perhaps.

  "We all do," the Hand stated. "We enjoy company. Please, eat." They did not exit, as they usually did. The Hand stood there.

  "All right," Ismene said, settling uncertainly onto the closest couch. Uncovering the dish, she found that it was an excellent stew, hot and meaty. Around it they'd placed other dainties and a chilled drink. "Would you like to—"

  The Hand was gone. She hadn't heard the door, but she had looked away for a moment.

  Ismene thought about it for as long as she reasonably could, and sighed. "I'd share the meal with you if you wanted," she said to the air.

  There was no response. She felt a little silly for trying.

  All the same, she was getting ravenous. The stew smelled delicious. She ate, feeling the warmth in her stomach, and appreciating the hearty flavor. By the time Ismene was done, she decided that she could accept the strangeness and let herself relax. She laid back in a hot bath, and soaked, reading until she felt tired enough to sleep.

  Maybe she did like the extra attention, after all, she thought as she settled into bed.

  * * *

  The next day, a few minutes before the sixth hour, Ismene knocked on Lady Harmonia's door.

  "Come in," she heard, and the door pivoted freely under her hand. Ismene stepped in and found Harmonia laying back with a tray of some fruit delicacy and a book in front of her.

  "I've got your list, Lady Harmonia," she stated. "I've found nearly everything this time."

  "Very well. First, I want you to tell me about Eryx," Harmonia said.

  Ismene ignored the feeling in her stomach and got on with it. She described Eryx's project, as far as she intended to, going just over and under Harmonia's probable level of acceptance to make it plausible. Would her observations, cooked up as they were, be enough? Was Harmonia going to see through her lack of genuine compliance? "I've got the list here; it includes her requested checkouts so far. She's taking a lot of notes, but she's been sticking to House circulars and rulebooks," Ismene said.

  Harmonia looked over the list. "All right," she echoed sternly. Did she really know all of them, or would she be looking up the titles later? Ismene didn't know. Maybe she wouldn't at all. "Has she started wearing a decent robe?"

  Ismene didn't have a good answer for that. "Ah, still blue, I'm afraid."

  "She needs to stop acting out," Harmonia said. "Do you think she's going to try taking her work to another House? Try to cut a deal for something?"

  Harmonia's question took Ismene entirely off guard. What was that about? Where was Harmonia coming from? Ismene scrambled to think about it.

  "I think she believes in her work," Ismene sallied faintly, "and is grateful for your father's help." She could tell Harmonia thought Ismene was just buttering her up. "No, it's true," she protested. And this time, she meant it. "No House would have given her this chance but him and you," Ismene argued. "Do you—I'm sorry," she paused. "Lady Harmonia, if I may; it's a scary place out there. The world is scary, if you lose your servant's contract. No one wants a worker who has already been thrown out for being trouble." She didn't say that the military would happily take them for labor; nor the factories. "Eryx owes you a lot. She could be in so much worse of a position. She won't try to sell out to another House."

  She could have said that the good of other Tyrenians wasn't a matter of any one House; but Ismene did not.

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  "You're a nice person, Ismene," Harmonia said. It was a compliment, but Ismene wasn't sure she agreed. Harmonia meant that she was a good worker. Ismene didn't know if she could be a good worker and a good person. "I hope Eryx is as good a person as you seem to believe. You might advise her to have a better attitude."

  And she was helping Eryx flout the rules. Ismene wasn't planning on doing anything differently for knowing that, but she still had to bear the knowing. Once she would have called it guilt. Now she thought it felt right. "I'll keep keeping an eye on her, Lady Harmonia. I've got the books she'd like, but of course we'll only take them if you agree to it."

  "Maybe." Harmonia said. "So. About my books."

  Ismene handed her the list, relieved. Harmonia took it, cleared a space on the central table, and started to look through it. "A pen, please." Ismene knew what to expect, and had one with her. Harmonia began checking things off.

  "What's this?" Harmonia asked, pointing at a history book in the series of maybes that Ismene had put at the bottom.

  "I haven't been able to find much in Tyrenian about the Apion State from that era," Ismene admitted. "I've listed the translated works on file, but they're not very relevant, and our own people don't seem to have been very welcome."

  "Hmm," Harmonia sighed. The Castle did not translate works for its patrons. Ismene had picked up a great many words in a great many alphabets, and she did what she could when it came to finding texts that could be translated once she and Harmonia took them back. Harmonia herself, however, could read various languages. "I'll see what I can find," Harmonia pronounced, making a note elsewhere. She continued, pausing on a line. "And this?"

  Ismene read the title. "That's a special request from Tellon. Prytane Thelusander's son?" she said. It was a dry little treatise about industrial efficiency. They would not sell copies of that book on the market, even if it were Assembly-approved for it. The designs were too valuable. Harmonia's shop would make two copies; one for Prytane Mellon to keep, and one to ship to Thelusander. She would pay Mellon handsomely for the copy.

  Somehow, Harmonia never seemed to find a problem with Ismene looking up all these things. Ismene found it a little hypocritical that she'd come down on Eryx so hard.

  "Right." Harmonia checked it off and kept going. She asked questions here and there, but almost always approved everything. Ismene had gotten very effective at finding useful works, even for the general requests. Mostly, Harmonia only questioned things because she'd forgotten what the item was.

  She did mark off one; a manual on gem-cutting that had some very lovely illustrations. "This isn't coming," she said of the request. "He's been rude to Father." It wasn't the first time personal drama had caused someone's business to be denied, and Ismene didn't bother debating such things. It was employer business, anyway. Yes, being denied information might cost someone in trade, but it wasn't like an employer would suffer from a mere loss of profit.

  The lists of common-edition books were what Ismene saved her breath for. It was true, the border guard would have their say in what got past the gates, and Harmonia's father would vet them a further time. Ismene couldn't do anything about that. She could at least try to make sure Harmonia let worthwhile books come back as far as the border. Once in print, a book might make it into the dorm section of a House library, and that was enough.

  Harmonia's vetting of those, however, was down to long habit. She read Ismene's summaries, left marks by the few she immediately deemed worthy, and sat back. "The rest; explain why you want them."

  Naturally, any instructional texts were among the questionables. Ismene went through each book, story by story or topic by topic, and explained to Lady Harmonia why she thought they might be worthy of publication. Harmonia checked about half of those, then, leaving Ismene with a final set of approvals.

  Harmonia looked out her window, this one with a surreal view of the forests across the Castle's cliff, and sat back. "Pick out some better casual reading for store stock. I want things with better taste. Poetry has been in fashion lately and I'm sure there are some old poems down there that will sell. I'll check them tomorrow. And Ismene?" she said. "When you've done that, you can relax a little."

  The interview was over. "Thank you, ma'am." Ismene packed up her sheets and left.

  Her room was safety.

  Appreciating the near-complete silence, Ismene sighed. "I love this place," she said to the Castle. "I love it, and I'm constantly breaking the rules. And I know you don't care about those rules, but if I ever mess up, I'm never going to get to come back."

  Things had gone as well as they could. Harmonia had approved Ismene's farm story after all; she'd also let pass a tome about animal husbandry that Ismene thought might update their current material. She knew the villages knew husbandry best, but not everyone had a good budget, and not all House libraries were well-stocked. Someone somewhere might benefit.

  As for the rejected titles, well, that was business. Ismene would smuggle her choices, the other books, back as she always had.

  Would she always get away with it? Would Harmonia find out, and throw her out of her House? Would someone like Eryx change things enough that Ismene didn't have to worry about that? Could the guild?

  "I wish I could just run my library," she said to the air.

  She drew another bath, and this time, she lay there until she nearly fell asleep.

  In that hazy space between sleep and comfort, Ismene thought she heard someone come into the room. It wasn't unusual for other workers to pass through the baths at home, so she didn't think twice about it.

  When she suddenly woke up, with night nearly fallen, Ismene realized she was quite alone.

  She should be unnerved, she thought. The Castle was very haunted, and Eryx would probably be afraid of the experience. Ismene just felt... "Like I'm home," she said. That was a nice idea, generally. Evo, in the bookshop, had recently asked her if she wanted to use her family-time allowance to help them foster Evo's children in the House crèche. Another one of the printers was with Evo in a more permanent arrangement, and Ismene liked the idea of a stable relationship, but she wasn't sure about one oriented around children. She certainly didn't want to help manage the gaggle of House children. Her mother and father had spent most of their time in the village crèche when Ismene herself was young, and she couldn't see herself spending much of any time doing that sort of work.

  She might just remain alone her whole life; but Ismene didn't want that, either. The lack of prospects for her library would be easier if she had someone to spend time with. Not necessarily intimately; she was only passingly interested in sex. But Ismene liked the idea of being able to trust someone. She was just not very good at finding people who she wanted to relax with, or who would pick her to relax with.

  And besides; if she did ever get caught smuggling, Ismene wouldn't be able to have a relationship with anyone, most likely.

  "I wish I could stay with you," she said to the room. The Castle was an unaccountable exception to everything. Oh well. It was silly to think that, if Ismene didn't mean anything special to someone normal like Evo, she could mean anything special to someone as remarkable as the Voice.