Lena's POV
Three days into Stormridge, I found the library.
No one showed it to me. I found it the way I found most things, by moving through the packhouse's corridors with the systematic attention of a person mapping territory, and by following the particular quality of quiet that libraries produce, which is different from the quiet of empty rooms because it has depth in it.
It occupied the whole of the north wing's second floor. Floor-to-ceiling shelves, reading tables at the window intervals, light coming in through long narrow panes that turned gold in the afternoon. Pack records along the east wall. Territorial histories along the north. A section near the back window that contained older texts, some of them in languages I did not recognize, arranged with the meticulous care of som
