Page 144 of Librarian

These questions are familiar, expected, and I relax into answering them, barely noticing the dagger heating in warning at my side until it pulses sharply.

What is it?

Frustration claws at me as I cut off mid-sentence.

Word has travelled faster than I expected. The dagger is heating up because it’s trying to draw power from me, and when I oblige, a door opens. Then another. Then another.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I begin, watching as aegis agents trickle into the room. “Most of the answers to your questions are in the booklet. For your safety, I must request that you take them home to read. Reopening officially happens tomorrow.”

“Our safety?” Hopkinson fixes me with a look, then glances over his shoulder at the agents approaching our gathered group with their grimoires out. “Librarian?—”

“Isidora’s new aegis squad is here, and I’d prefer my patrons not be caught in the middle should they attempt to make any arrests.”

“Then I shall stay as a witness,” the older man insists. “They have no jurisdiction here. Everyone knows that.”

The last is aimed solely at the gathering of black-uniformed arcanists behind him. Several other magisters nod, standing to one side but refusing to leave. Some edge away, heading for the doors, but not all.

More than half of them are staying.

The gathered academics are like a buffer between me and the thirty or so masked agents.

Gratitude thickens my throat, forcing me to clear it as Michael Ó Rinn steps away from the pack, flanked by two other arcanists. The three of them eye the professors warily as they approach my desk.

Their new uniforms are more severe than the last. The lower halves of the agents’ faces are covered by black masks emblazoned with a golden shield that denotes them as part of Isidora’s new aegis squad. Defensive runeforms have been embroidered across their coats.

In short, they look every inch the army of the necromancer they unwittingly serve.

“Librarian,” Michael says, perfunctory civility coating the title.

I raise a brow. “Officer Ó Rinn. I believe we’ve spoken at length about attempting to intimidate me before.”

His eyes widen. Stars, did he really believe I wouldn’t recognise him with the lower half of his face covered? Even without that, I still have the ability to identify people by their grimoires. I have no idea why I kept that particular quirk, but it’s even stronger now that I’m in the Arcanaeum, and I’m grateful. I can sense the slick decay of necromancy coming from the book holstered at the side of the woman on his left.

“And you, Ingrid Delmar, are on one strike.” I raise an eyebrow at her before turning to the man on their right. “As are you, Rowan McKinley. I would suggest you take those ridiculous masks off right now and stop behaving this way before I banish the lot of you.”

“Aegis agents are?—”

“The same as any other enforcement officers and subject to the same rules as any other patron,” I cut him off. “One of you is sufficient to seek my assistance in whatever errand you’ve been sent on.”

Michael’s brows furrow, his eyes glinting as he deliberately neglects to remove his mask. “We’re here to arrest Pierce Carlton, Jasper McKinley, and Northcliff Ackland on suspicion of practising necromancy.”

Forty

Kyrith

“Absolutely not.” Halinor’s face is set in the kind of scowl that’s unique to furious old women. “I don’t care if you’re calling yourself enforcement, or aegis, or whatever. After the destruction you caused in my home, Clan McKinley no longer recognises your authority.”

“Nor does Talcott,” Dakari growls.

“Nor Ó Rinn,” Leo adds. “If you’re going to be Ackland’s lap dogs, you no longer have the authority to arrest or interrogate members of my house.”

It’s a move we discussed earlier in the week, one that any amount of research will prove is completely legal, if unprecedented.

That doesn’t make it any less of a bombshell.

Michael just stares. Several other agents around the room shift their weight nervously.

Enforcement has always been given its authority by the parriarchs. Now, three of them are taking it away.