Barb Hendee - In Shade and Shadow

Assist indeed—more likely keep an eye on her. High-Tower or Sykion must've gotten to him, and she'd lost another friendly acquaintance.

"She must remain with me," Wynn answered without apology, and kept a hand on the female's back. "She won't even nudge the shelves, I promise, but it's my duty to watch over her."

"Not in here!" Tärpodious croaked, and heaved himself up with wrinkled hands.

Domin il'Sänke slipped around Wynn, straight at the old man, and began whispering. The old archivist sneered in a twist of astonishment.

"That is nonsense!" he hissed. "I've never heard of anyone even seeing one… let alone the notion of it outside Lhoin'na lands!"

Wynn's gaze narrowed on il'Sänke, still whispering in Tärpodious's ear. If the Suman had read her journals, others involved in translation had done so, High-Tower especially. Yet they still refused to believe her recordings any more than her verbal claims concerning more deadly matters than a majay-hì.

"Fine, if she's that far gone," Tärpodious grumbled. "But you're responsible, Ghassan, if that animal causes damage."

Wynn also hoped Chap's daughter would behave, but she didn't like the hint of how il'Sänke had gained the elder sage's agreement. Tärpodious hunched where he braced upon the table's edge and eyed Wynn like a vulture waiting for her to drop dead.

"But no food inside!" he warned. "You may finish it here or leave it behind."

Domin il'Sänke ushered Wynn to a table farthest from the archivist.

"What did you just tell him?" she demanded in a whisper.

"If you are thought a madwoman—or act like one—at least take advantage of it… and anything that seemingly soothes your addled mind."

She glanced down at Chap's daughter.

"I'm not mad!" Wynn hissed. "And you of all people know it."

"Not by that nonsense in the common hall," il'Sänke returned. "Keep your new companion away from the populace. Now finish your meal, and Tärpodious will show you to your place."

With that he turned and left, and Wynn settled at the table, unshouldering her satchel. She set one bowl of stew on the floor for her "companion." The female sniffed it uncertainly, but finally began lapping at her stew, finishing off the gravy but not touching the vegetables.

Wynn sighed. "We'll find you something better tonight."

She quickly ate her own meal, pocketing the roll for later, and shouldered her satchel once more.

"Where am I to study the translations?" she asked.

Tärpodious grunted and gestured to the archway behind himself. "In there."

Wynn walked over to peer inside.

There were few shelves in the small antechamber. It was probably an old storage room turned into a temporary holding place for material waiting to be reshelved. Dust trails on the floor suggested the shelves had been recently moved. The room now contained a table for her special workspace. The table had been placed in a direct sight line with the room's doorless opening.

Tärpodious had been told to watch over her.

Why did Sykion and High-Tower always have to paint her as untrustworthy? But the arrangement was better than none—and all she planned to do was read and take notes.

"Thank you," she said politely, and stepped into her prepared space.

Four heavy stacks of scribed sheets lay upon the table, some bound and some not. Beside them rested a large makeshift book, laced together with temporary waxed string—the codex. Forgetting hurt pride, Wynn motioned to the dog.

"Come."

Whether Chap's daughter understood or not, she trotted in, sniffing the floor and scanning the strange surroundings.

"Stay in here with me," Wynn said softly, "and do not knock anything over."

The female cocked her head, whined once, and went back to sniffing about.

"Come here," Wynn insisted, settling into her chair.

The majay-hì didn't look at her.

Master Tärpodious glanced over his shoulder, watching with his lips pressed tightly together in disapproval. Wynn pretended not to notice him.

Chap's young daughter hadn't traveled as her father had. Likely she didn't understand spoken words, let alone human tongues. But perhaps she'd heard a little of the an'Cróan dialect, enough to understand a few basic words—if she chose to.

Wynn pointed at the floor beside her chair. " A'Shiuvalh, so-äiche! Walk… come, here!"

The female craned her head around, and then sneezed. Snorting to clear her nose of dust, she wandered about the room, but finally settled beside the chair.

With a long exhale, Wynn turned to the materials before her, suddenly daunted. She'd waited so long for this, but now where to start?

Some sheets were bound in thin volumes of hardened cloth covers. It was easy to discern that these were complete sections, perhaps whole chapters, kept together because they related to a particular text. But others were merely neat, loose collections awaiting further translation or transcribed passages. Wynn closed her eyes, gathering her thoughts.

Translation had been ongoing for half a year. A good deal of work had been accomplished from the look of things, but Wynn knew better. She'd brought back two large bundles and one iron-bound sheaf of hardened leather sheets. The inked content here was written with compact Begaine symbols but with extra space between lines for further notes and corrections. At a guess, less than a fifth of what she had brought had even been touched. But the murders and thefts had only recently begun, so she knew she shouldn't spend much time on the pages completed earlier.

But which ones were they?

And more important, she had to be able to cross-reference which pages existed in the codex but weren't present on the table—as the murderer had taken them. These would be the pages she needed to examine, and she wouldn't receive an ounce of guidance from her superiors.

She opened the codex, flipped to its rearmost pages, and breathed in relief. The record of scheduled work had been kept intact, all the way to the project's beginning. At least she could roughly determine which pages were most recently translated. She took a moment to scan the names of those who'd been involved.

Cathology was the second smallest of the orders, next to metaology. Of course High-Tower's name appeared time and again, as well as two others. But there were also domins and masters from the other orders, as needed. Ghassan il'Sänke appeared infrequently. It seemed even he, as an outsider, had seen only a minimum of the work.

Wynn picked up a thin, bound volume and looked at the opening page—volume seven, section two. But which text did this refer to? Most of the texts she'd selected hadn't had any titling on their crude bindings.

She didn't know how her superiors had tabulated the originals, so she checked the reference against the codex's schedule of completed work. This thin volume had its last addition made on the fourth of Billiagyth—Leaf's Shower—the last third of autumn by the elven calendar used throughout the region. And that was within the present moon.

Taking up loose pages, Wynn prepared to read, but she stopped upon seeing two running columns of text on each page.

Both were scripted in the Begaine syllabary, but the left column represented the original language, while the right was a translation into Numanese. Her estimate of how much work had been completed had just been cut in half again.

Many passages didn't make sense, for only bits and pieces had been finished. In some she found strings of dots between the syllabic symbols, which indicated the number of words that remained unreadable or untranslatable from the original. There were also long strokes across entire columns for anyplace in a text that was too faded or worn to count words. And there were margin notes wherever a readable word or phrase had defied translation so far.