"The keys?" Melite asked.

  Ismene stood in the front office alcove of the bookstore. Melite had been there when she arrived. She'd never cared much for him one way or another, and now she had to tell herself not to resent Melite just for doing his job. He had an aura of I'm doing this, but it's below me about the whole thing.

  Would he be the one who got to take those Castle trips, now—?

  Ismene surrendered the keys with no change in the haziness inside her. Surely she should feel something more. Anything. She wasn't entirely ungrateful that she was holding back the tears, keeping herself presentable, but shouldn't she feel less... empty?

  "Well, get to it. You can work, can't you?"

  Ismene looked blankly at him. He made the schedules, didn't he? The log sheets she put out went to him. Maybe it was another manager? "I assumed you'd reassign me." She had to do something; she wasn't getting her daily token allowance anymore. She wanted to stretch her token stash as long as possible and, gods-damn it, they owed her a servant's allowance until her contract was up.

  "You're not my problem anymore. If you want your tokens, you find something useful to do," Melite added.

  Indignation twisted through the loss balled up inside her. "I've helped man the front; I take and settled orders; I collect timesheets and research new titles. They may not be my duties now, but—"

  "Are you suggesting I can't do that?" Melite said. She knew the tone. He wasn't asking a question; he was telling her to stop.

  He sounded like her mother.

  "I can sew signatures, and pack orders," she said, somehow further dissatisfied. That felt wrong; there was nothing shameful in being a binder in any role, and just because she ran the front didn't make her any better than the other servants. Maybe being of use to Melite felt more like a humiliation. She felt bad for everyone else, frankly.

  "Fine. Go pack. Come to me when you want your allowance." Melite dismissed her and, slightly doubtful, Ismene walked back into the workshop hall.

  Aside from the account payments and scheduling, Ismene wondered if Melite knew the first thing about the way the shop was run. Then again, Ismene wondered if it mattered. Could things really just change over that quickly? Was she so unimportant?

  Before Melite could wander back and start taking exception to Ismene's lack of direction, she decided she'd have to work. She could already see her coworkers looking at her as they passed. She didn't want to know if they were talking about her. She wasn't sure what she would say if anyone said anything.

  The sewing stations were all occupied. She didn't think the leads would want her moving into that, although she suspected she still knew how. Order fulfillment, then.

  There were a few servants working at the end of that wing, separating finished volumes out for packing. "Jeno, can I help?" she asked. "It's just for a few days."

  That wasn't how it should have worked, but they didn't argue, and Ismene went to work.

  She tried to lose herself in it. She really did. It was almost enough; she had to constantly consult the orders, locate finished volumes here and there, wrap and package, run things up into the shop when they needed it. But it wasn't enough. She kept seeing Melite walking around, have low conversations with various sections, and head back up to the office. It smacked of change on the horizon, and Ismene had always dreaded that.

  Stop it, she told herself. You can't stop this, and they'll probably be all right. Not everyone's as afraid of change as you. She could just hear her mother tell her not to worry about it when she had responsibilities of her own.

  Ismene needed to see her new contract. She'd either have to apply to Harmonia for permission or see it when she got to Dima. The terms might be as nice as Harmonia had implied, but Ismene would be the one living under those terms.

  Would she have to?

  When it came down to things, Ismene didn't see any alternatives for the time being. What other options did she actually have? Tear it up and leave? She wasn't going to sign up with a factory. Impressment into army labor didn't appeal to her at all.

  Maybe the temples?

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Ismene hadn't thought of them often. Her village had its own customs, but those were the village's, not administered by a temple. She didn't have a sponsor to send her to a temple, and she didn't want to devote herself to labor at one for any personal notions of spirituality. She didn't need them to know that smuggling books seemed like the right thing to do. Would the temples take her, perhaps? She did love the Castle, which they venerated; but that didn't mean anything. She wasn't sure she wanted a menial role at a temple any more than one in a factory.

  She wished she could go to the Castle itself. Could she make it there without a permit? Avoid the city guard, chance patrols on the road, the border guard? What if—and Ismene wanted to laugh at how desperately eager she felt about it—what if she could convince Timander to apply for Castle journeys?

  She wasn't sure she could sell them on that, or handle the rejection when they told her, a novice in the House, to remember her place. If they could profit by visiting the Castle, they'd already be trying to do it, she thought. And she knew how few scholars she'd seen there lately. It was too much to hope for... although she'd be lying if she said she wasn't considering it.

  At lunch, Ismene approached Melite while he was in the middle of the floor; she wasn't sure she wanted to do it when he was alone. "May I have my allowance?"

  "Say please?"

  She didn't dare give him grounds for arguing 'attitude'. "Please."

  "Oh, I suppose you can have one," he said, handing her a single token.

  When she get her lunch, using the damn token, she felt like she might throw up. She closeted herself in the alley behind the shop. It wasn't real privacy, but it was as close as she could get. Even if she wanetd to retch, she'd better eat while she could.

  How had things fallen apart so quickly?

  * * *

  The bookstore chimes jingled, and then the shop door swung open. Ismene looked up from the books she was shelving. It wasn't a customer; instead, it was a servant, carrying a rough stack of papers. Melite approached them and, after a low conversation, came over to Ismene.

  "Lady Harmonia wants these burned," Melite said breathlessly, shoving the armful onto Ismene. She had to rapidly adjust the book she was holding to avoid spilling the whole stack.

  Then she recognized Eryx's handwriting. "Why is she—"

  "Don't interrupt," Melite said. "I know you know the filing system. I want these, any copies from this author that you have on file, and any prior notes. Any material related to them is to be destroyed."

  She'd only come up for a moment; the timing was atrocious. Of course, now he cared about her experience. But also, the order didn't make any sense. Destroy Eryx's work?

  Melite dismissed the other worker, then turned back to Ismene. "Do I need to repeat myself?"

  Ismene tried to make sense of it as she gathered up the uneven stack more firmly. "I'm sorry; that's a lot of items. Everything Eryx wrote?"

  "I'm waiting," Melite said.

  Ismene felt done with him, and done with whatever was happening. Harmonia or the Prytane might dismiss her easily; but Eryx actually meant something. "I'm sorry; I'm not trying to argue. It's just that that includes a lot of our House rules, and personal correspondence with the Prytane, and—"

  "Shut up," Melite said, his temper cracking. "Are you really disrespecting me? In your position?"

  Ismene balked. She didn't want to get turned over for discipline to the House guard, or the Assembly's soldiers. If they found out about her books...

  She also didn't want to do this to Eryx, but Ismene wasn't sure she could do anything to stop it. Would she have to just do it?

  "I'll have to sort out a lot of files," she told Melite, tonelessly. She didn't feel real. "May I borrow the keys? It may take a little while." Melite was only doing his job, she told herself yet again, but something was going on. Harmonia was trashing Eryx's work. Why? What should Ismene do? Then, Ismene remembered the two books she'd taken for Eryx. What if it was Eryx who had been discovered?

  Melite gruffly surrendered the keys and Ismene took them, shifting the paper in her arms to grab the ring. The use of the keys alone told her how much of a rush Melite was in; he was willing to relinquish a bit of his power. "I'll work as fast as I can," Ismene added to placate him, her mind racing. If Eryx had been caught with books she shouldn't have, Ismene should have been the first to be questioned.

  She wasn't lucky enough to be left alone. Melite dogged her all the way to the back of the print house, and it attracted some attention. She caught Evo's eye, but she had no chance to talk.

  In the back room, past the piles and piles of printed sheets, Ismene set the stack down on a table. Then she started unlocking cabinets. "How much do you have from her?" Melite inquired. "Why would this take a while? It's not like we published her."

  "I'm sorry, but Eryx has written a lot for the House," Ismene said, watching her words carefully. "A lot of the rules bulletins, the lunch policies for a few years, and a great deal of reports for the Prytane and his assistants." Those were small runs, but they had files for all of them. "I have to look in several places, and make sure nothing's been stuffed into the temporary section. If you want everything she did, that is a lot. I can take care of sorting it out, of course."

  Melite stood there, clearly warring between his orders and his disinterest in the menial nature of the work. "I'll help," he said, grudgingly.

  Ismene, reluctantly, set to work. Clearly this was important enoguh for Melite to fall into line, too.

  At the very back, kept from the binding and paper by a low brick wall, there was a firebox. Trash went in there often enough. Melite set about lighting it.

  When the fire was burning, he started feeding in the initial stack he'd dumped on Ismene. As she pulled items from their files, piling them up next to it, she caught glimpses of the papers Melite had taken in.

  They weren't just old print runs. They were Eryx's personal notes. Originals. Some looked like parts of a speech, or an essay, and some were notes between Eryx and Prytane Mellon.