Chapter 2: The Call
The chaos in the west stacks had settled into a soggy, organized sort of disaster. The burst pipe had been mended by a harried team of municipal hydromancers, but the damage was done. Puddles shimmered on the dark stone floor, and the air hung thick with the cloying, sweet-metallic scent of dissolved watermail and wet parchment. Teams of junior archivists moved like cautious insects, ferrying sopping bundles to the conservation lab on rolling carts that squeaked protest with every revolution.
Archibold Grimsborough stood in the midst of it, a tweed-clad island of bewildered concern. His ill-fitting jacket was damp at the elbows, and his walrus mustache seemed to droop more than usual under the humidity. He held a limp scroll, its wax seal blurred into a meaningless smear, its vellum pages fused into a single, tragic block.
“A tragedy,” he murmured to no one in particular. “A true tragedy. This was the 14th-century liturgy of the Duskward Sisters. Irreplaceable.”
Felicity from Conservation splashed past, arms full of dripping ledgers. “We’ve got the desiccator wards powered up in Lab Three, Archibold. But we need to prioritize. Some of these ink runs are active. The one from the Alchemy Wing just spelled out a rather rude word in Old Dwarvish.”
“Prioritize, yes, of course,” Archibold said, blinking. He carefully placed the ruined scroll on a cart already overflowing with casualties. “Where’s Evermore? She has a steady hand for this sort of triage.”
Felicity paused, shifting the weight of the ledgers. “Haven’t seen her since this morning. Right after you spoke with her.”
“Oh, she’s probably in the Artefact Division already, getting Theo settled.” Archibold nodded, the logic satisfying him. “Yes, very like her. Team player. Theo will need her institutional knowledge.” He missed the flat look Felicity gave him before she hurried on.
He made his way back to his office, his shoes squelching faintly. The relative quiet was a relief. His desk was a familiar landscape of precarious stacks and one wilting potted fern. He sank into his leather chair, which let out a weary sigh, and patted his pockets for his reading glasses. They were, as usual, lost. He began shuffling papers, looking for the damage report form. The phone on his desk rang.
It was an old, blocky thing, black and punctuated by a blinking red light for holding calls. The display showed ‘UNKNOWN CALLER.’ Government offices, sometimes. Or funding bodies. He straightened his tie, cleared his throat, and picked up the receiver.
“Archibold Grimsborough, Royal Archives, Magical History and Preservation. How may I assist?”
The voice on the other end was not that of a bored bureaucrat. It was cool, clean, and carried a weight that had nothing to do with volume. It was the sound of polished stone and old money.
“Mr. Grimsborough. Edmund Evermore.”
Archibold’s eyebrows climbed towards his hairline. “Ah! Duke Evermore!A pleasure, sir. Concerning the annual benefactor’s gala, I presume? I’ve already forwarded the list of potential display artefacts to your secretary. The Singing Skull of Marth is particularly—”
“My daughter is no longer an employee at your establishment, effective immediately.”
The sentence was delivered not as a question, not as a negotiation, but as a simple, immutable statement of fact. Like announcing the sky was blue.
Archibold’s mind went blank. The Singing Skull evaporated. “I… pardon?”
“Liliana.Her employment is terminated. As of today.”
“Terminated?” The word felt alien in Archibold’s mouth. “There must be a mistake, Duke Evermore. She’s… she’s downstairs, doubtless. The west stacks had a bit of a flooding issue, a real crisis, and she’s our best for a salvage operation. Very steady. Dependable.” He found himself repeating the same words from earlier, as if they were a protective incantation.
“She is not in your west stacks.” The voice held no warmth, no give. “She is at home. And she will not be returning. I am calling as a courtesy to ensure you process her severance and final wages without delay. The paperwork will be redundant, but you seem a man who appreciates the proper forms.”
A cold, greasy feeling began to spread in Archibold’s stomach. He thought of Liliana’s face in the hallway that morning. He had replayed the interaction several times, trying to pinpoint where the congratulatory speech for Theo had perhaps needed more flair. He’d settled on the idea that she was just overwhelmed by the flood. Steady people sometimes struggled with chaos.
“Duke Evermore, please,” he sputtered, his voice tightening. “If this is about the Senior Archivist position… Theo is a fine young man, brilliant new ideas, but Liliana’s role here is invaluable. I never meant to imply…”
“What you meant is irrelevant. The outcome is what matters. You overlooked dedication in favor of ‘sparkle.’” The word was sliced off, sharp enough to draw blood. “You took her competence for granted. You rewarded it with oversight. Now you have neither her competence nor the artefacts she could have saved for you today.”
A heavy silence stretched down the line, broken only by the faint, hollow sound of Archibold’s own breathing. He could hear the truth in it. The soggy catastrophe downstairs was precisely Liliana’s domain. Theo was probably in his new office, reading a manual on index spells, unaware that centuries-old ink was bleeding together in the dark.
“I see,” Archibold whispered, the fight gone out of him.
“I doubt that,” Edmund Evermore said, the ice thawing by a single, measured degree into something even more terrifying: pure, unadulterated disdain. “But for the sake of your remaining ‘sparkle,’ you should pretend to. Process the termination. Do not call her. The Evermore family will be re-evaluating its annual patronage commitment to the Archives. Good day, Mr. Grimsborough.”
The line went dead with a soft, final click.
Archibold sat very still, the receiver pressed to his ear, listening to the dial tone buzz like an angry insect. The chaotic sounds from the corridor outside—the squeaking carts, the frantic shouts, the wet slap of a fallen folio—all seemed to recede, muffled by a thickening layer of sheer, dawning horror.
He slowly lowered the phone into its cradle. The blinking red light continued, oblivious. He looked at his hands, pale and slightly damp, resting on the chaotic desk. He looked at the wilting fern. He thought of the solidified block of the Duskward Sisters’ liturgy, now irrecoverable. He thought of eight years of flawless, quiet, essential work walking out the door without a sound, while he’d been fretting over pipe fittings.
The promotion for Theo had seemed so strategic at the time.Modern.Fresh. It was what the board whispers had suggested they needed.
Now, all he could see was the gaping hole where dependable, steady Liliana had been. A hole that was currently filling with water.
He did not get up. He did not call for assistance. He just sat there, in the quiet of his office, as the reality of his own profound, oblivious failure seeped into the room, cold and deep as floodwater, and drowned everything else out.
He just sat there, in the quiet of his office, as the reality of his own profound, oblivious failure seeped into the room, cold and deep as floodwater, and drowned everything else out.
It wasn’t just about today’s salvage. It was about tomorrow, and the day after. The entire archival system relied on a delicate lattice of maintenance spells, each one a unique fingerprint of magical code. The humidity wards in the Rare Manuscripts vault. The anti-vermin sigils woven into the stonework of the sub-basement. The complex, multi-layered organizational charm that governed the entire Artefact Division’s inventory, the one that responded only to specific tonal passwords he could never remember.
Liliana had built them. She had perfected them over years of quiet, iterative work. She had notebooks, probably, but they’d be in her personal shorthand, locked in her desk or her flat. Theo’s “modern methods” were theoretical. They couldn’t chant to a rebellious preservation matrix to calm it down. They couldn’t diagnose why the shipment-tracking incantation for incoming artefacts had started listing everything by color instead of century. She was the living, breathing API for this entire place, and he had casually unplugged her.
He was so utterly, catastrophically screwed.
A soft, hesitant knock sounded at the door. It opened a crack before he could answer. Maisie, his secretary, peered in, her face pale. “Forgive me, sir, but your ten o’clock is here.”
Archibold stared at her, his mind still spiraling through logistical nightmares. “Ten o’clock?”
“The appointment with Mr. Sato?From the Eastern Empire? Regarding the Sato collection?” Maisie’s voice squeaked with stress. “You confirmed it last week. Repeatedly.”
Behind her, a man stepped into view. He filled the doorway, not with bulk, but with a palpable, silent authority. He was tall, dressed in a tailored, dark grey suit that spoke of understated wealth rather than western fashion. His long, dark hair was tied back in a severe knot. But it was his eyes that caught and held Archibold’s scattered attention. They were a striking, luminous gold, like twin suns held in a calm face, and they took in the disheveled office, the damp-spotted tweed, and Archibold’s own stunned expression with one unnervingly swift assessment.“Mr. Grimsborough,” the man said. His voice was a low, smooth baritone, accent clipping the edges of his words. “Tadashi Sato. I apologize if this is an inconvenient time.”
Archibold scrambled to his feet, a stack of loose-leaf reports slithering from his lap to the floor. “No! No, not at all.Well. It is.But come in. Please.” He waved a hand vaguely. “Maisie, that’s all, thank you.”
Tadashi Sato entered, moving with a predator’s grace that made the cluttered room seem suddenly smaller. He did not offer his hand. He simply stood before the desk, waiting. The sweet, rotten smell of the watermail flood seemed to curl away from him, replaced by the subtle scent of sandalwood and crisp linen.
“You are here about the scrolls,” Archibold said, stating the obvious as he sank back into his chair, his legs weak.
“I am.” Tadashi’s gaze flickered to the damp patch on Archibold’s elbow. “There was mention of water damage in the main hall. I trust the Sato holdings in the Restricted Magical Artefacts wing were unaffected.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a demand wrapped in impeccable politeness.
Archibold felt a fresh wave of cold nausea. The Restricted Wing. It was on a lower level. The backup sump pumps were supposed to kick in. They were spells Liliana checked every quarter. When was the last quarterly check? He couldn’t recall.
“The… the Restricted Wing has its own containment systems,” Archibold said, his voice thin. “Independent wards. Quite robust.”
Tadashi Sato’s golden eyes remained fixed on him. “I would like to see them. Now.”
“Of course, of course. Right this way.” Archibold lurched up again, his mind a frantic scramble. He needed to get down there. He needed to see the damage himself. He needed Liliana, but Liliana was gone, and this man with the eyes of a sun god was about to discover that the crown jewels of his family’s history were possibly sitting in a puddle.
He led the way out, his shoes still giving a faint, damp squelch with each step. The chaos in the hallway had not lessened. They passed a cart where a junior archivist was carefully peeling apart two fused pages of a bestiary, a tiny, illuminated griffin weeping blue ink onto her gloves.
Tadashi’s stride never broke, but his profile tightened. “The saturation is extensive.”
“A minor pipe burst. Truly.” Archibold’s laugh was a brittle thing. “Contained.”
They descended a spiral staircase of black iron, moving further from the main flood but deeper into the archival bowels. The air grew cooler, drier, thanks to the climate spells. At the heavy, rune-engraved door to the Restricted Wing, Archibold fumbled with his keychain. His fingers, slick with nervous sweat, slipped twice before the mechanism clicked.
The door opened with a sigh of perfect, climate-sealed air.
And revealed a scene of pristine, undisturbed order. Rows of climate-controlled cases glowed with soft internal light. Not a single puddle marred the dark slate floor. The air hummed with the healthy, resonant frequency of active preservation magic. Archibold’s knees went genuinely weak with relief.
“You see? Perfectly intact.” He tried to inject confidence into his voice.
Tadashi ignored him, stepping past to approach a specific case near the far wall. Inside, on a cradle of black velvet, lay a series of seven scrolls, their cases made of aged ivory and lacquered wood. He studied them for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he leaned closer, his gaze intent on the nearly invisible shimmer of the ward enclosing them.
“The containment field is fluctuating,” he stated, his voice flat. “The resonance is off by approximately seven hertz. It has decayed since its last calibration.”
Archibold blinked. “I… how can you possibly tell?”
“The Sato scrolls were sealed by my ancestors with a specific harmonic.” Tadashi did not look away from the case. “I feel the dissonance. It is… uncomfortable.” He finally turned those unsettling eyes on Archibold. “Who is responsible for maintaining these matrices?”
The question hung in the perfectly controlled air. Archibold’s mouth opened, then closed. The name was a ghost in his throat. He saw the intricate, glowing spells in his mind’s eye, each one a masterpiece of magical engineering left to rust.
“The archivist who managed this wing… is no longer with us,” he finally managed, the words ash in his mouth.
Tadashi Sato’s head tilted a single, deliberate degree. The movement was avian, predatory. “No longer with you.”
“She left. Today.” Archibold heard the pathetic defensiveness in his own tone. “But I assure you, her replacement is highly qualified. A modern thinker.”
“These scrolls are eight hundred years old,” Tadashi said softly, turning back to gaze at them. His long fingers hovered near the glass, not touching it. “They do not require modern thinking. They require understanding. They require reverence.” He paused, the hum of the spells the only sound. “They require the archivist who built this ward. Where is she?”
The silence in the Restricted Wing was absolute, a vacuum that seemed to suck the air from Archibold’s lungs. Tadashi Sato’s question hung between them, sharp as a blade. The gentle, failing hum of the preservation field was the only sound.
Archibold didn’t know what to say, but he was born to save his own skin.
“She quit,” he blurted, the words too loud in the quiet.“Just like that. I don’t know why. Eight years, and she quit just like that.” He spread his hands, a gesture of helpless bewilderment that was only partly an act. “Personal reasons, I’m sure. Women, you know? Emotional creatures.”
Tadashi wasn’t one to have the wool pulled over his eyes. He looked at the squirming little man, his golden eyes missing nothing—the damp tweed, the sheen of sweat on the forehead, the way the man’s gaze skittered away from the failing ward around his family’s treasures.
“She just quit.” Tadashi’s voice was low, each word precise and chill. “She built these intricate, interweaving spell matrices for preservation on top of the ones my family put in. And you just told me she quit.”
He took a single step forward. Archibold instinctively leaned back, bumping against a cold slate table.
“There must be a reason.” Tadashi continued, his tone leaving no room for argument. “There is always a reason.Tell me the reason. And then tell me how I can find her, because clearly something is going on here.”
Archibold’s mouth worked soundlessly. He saw his future dissolving like wet parchment. The Sato collection was one of their most prestigious holdings. A scandal here, lost artefacts, would end him. He thought of Duke Evermore’s voice, cold and final on the phone. He was caught between a rock and a very hard, very wealthy place.
“It was… a restructuring,” he stammered, grasping for corporate jargon like a lifeline. “A promotional opportunity didn’t materialize as expected. A misunderstanding, really. I’m certain she’ll reconsider after a few days. The Archives was her life!”
Even as he said it, he heard the hollow falseness of it. He remembered the look on her face in the hallway. It hadn’t been emotional. It had been still. Final.
Tadashi watched him for another long, unbearable moment. He then turned his back, a dismissive gesture that was more insulting than any shout. He reached into his suit jacket and removed a slender, matte-black case. He opened it, revealing not business cards, but thin, metallic wafers etched with faint, glowing lines.
“These are the foundational sigils for the Sato wards,” he said, speaking to the scrolls as much as to Archibold. “They are syncing with your failing matrix. They are telling me it is destabilizing at a rate of nine percent per hour.” He selected one wafer, its glow a sickly, pulsating yellow. “This one governs bacterial mitigation. It is already dark.”
He snapped the case shut. The sound was like a bone breaking.
“You have approximately five hours before the micro-climate in that case collapses. After that, fungal spores in the air of this very room will begin consuming the vellum.” He finally looked back at Archibold. “The reason for her departure is your concern. Her location is now mine. You will give me her name and her last known address. Now.”
It wasn’t a request. Archibold felt a tremor start in his hands. He saw the lawsuit, the international incident, the utter ruin. He fumbled for a sticky note on a nearby desk, his handwriting a spidery scrawl.
“Liliana Evermore,” he whispered, writing her name and the street he knew from her file. He pushed the note toward Tadashi.
Tadashi took it without looking. He folded it once, precisely, and placed it inside his jacket.
“Your established systems are crumbling, Mr. Grimsborough.” His gaze swept the room, seeing not order, but a house of cards. “You replaced a cornerstone with ‘sparkle.’ Now the entire structure shakes.”
He walked toward the door, his steps silent on the slate. He paused at the threshold, not turning around.
“Fix this. Or my next call will be to my embassy, and you will be explaining to them why centuries of my family’s history are rotting in your basement.”
Then he was gone. The heavy door sighed shut behind him, sealing Archibold in with the failing light of the wards and the sweet, creeping scent of impending decay.
Tadashi Sato moved through the flooded chaos of the main archive without seeing it. The shouts, the splashing, the smell of disaster were just background noise. His mind was parsing the data. A master archivist, a builder of exquisite magical systems, had walked away on the day of a catastrophic flood. She had been passed over. The man in charge was a coward and a fool.
The note in his pocket felt like the only solid thing in the whole decaying building.
He exited onto the sun-drenched steps, the cacophony of the marketplace hitting him like a wall. He didn’t head for the auto-carriage waiting at the curb. Instead, he turned his face up, eyes closing for a brief second. He filtered out the scent of spiced meat and perfumed nobles. He sought the subtler trails, the magical signatures woven into the city’s fabric.There. Faint, but distinct. A residual echo of the preservation magic from the basement, like a unique perfume. It had a quality to it—meticulous, layered, intelligent. It was intertwined with another, fainter signature: a personal one, carrying hints of polished oak, a specific brand of lavender ink, and the crisp, clean scent of static from an overworked clarity crystal.
He opened his eyes. The trail was hours cold, fractured by the foot traffic of thousands. But it had a direction. It led away from the Archives, not toward the crowded tenements, but across the Archon’s Bridge. Toward the quieter, greener districts where the air smelled of money and old wardings.
Toward the address on the note.
He signaled his driver with a minute shake of his head. The auto-carriage pulled away. He needed to walk. He needed to follow the fading impression of her magic, this Liliana Evermore. He needed to understand the mind that had built those failing wards, and why it had chosen to abandon them.
As he descended into the market’s flow, a purpose solidified within him, cold and sharp. This was no longer just about salvage.It was an investigation. The Archives were a crime scene of gross neglect. Archibold Grimsborough was the culprit.
And Liliana Evermore was the key witness he needed to find.