Hezhi watched it back into the hall, hesitate near a stairwell, perhaps deciding where to go next. Qey had told her that ghosts often did not know what they were about—often forgot even that they were dead. Where and when did this one think it was? She studied it, hoping for clues, but this ghost provided few. It was less a form or even a shadow than a distortion in the air, like something seen through a glass of water—or like glass itself, for that matter. Sometimes you could see more—features, even. When Hezhi was six, she had awakened to confront the pale, nervous face of a young man. When she shrieked, he vanished quite quickly. She had never seen so clear an image since then.

Qey left little offerings for a few of the ghosts—especially Luhnnata, the one who inhabited her kitchen. Hezhi had come to be familiar with the young man who haunted her own room, though she never again saw his face.

She shrugged. This wing of the palace was strange to her, one with ghosts she had never seen. Certainly it would not be a dangerous one, not here, so close to the heart of things, where the Sba'ghun priests swept nearly every week.

"Let's go, Tsem," she commanded, stepping out into the light of the courtyard. The air was fragrant with sage and oregano growing from various stoneware boxes. A pigeon quickened its waddle to avoid their passage. Hezhi and Tsem brushed on past the ghost, which seemed to hug close to the wall when they came near.

"I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier," Hezhi muttered as they turned from the narrow passage onto a larger thoroughfare. Though it was a covered hallway, light streamed in from the courtyards on either side; the basic architecture of the palace made it impossible to go far from one of the alleged hundred and eighty-seven courts.

Tsem shrugged, not otherwise answering.

"You did think of it, didn't you?"

"Not exactly," the half Giant said reluctantly.

"Some help you are."

"Princess. Remember that you bullied me into helping you with this little enterprise. My agreement was only to go along with you into the lower cities to protect you. I never said I would do any more than that."

"You said you would help me find D'en."

"I never said that, Princess."

Hezhi thought about it. He hadn't. Still, she was in no mood to be generous. "Two years we've been running into solid walls— literally. If I'd thought to go through the library two years ago, we would have found him by now."

"Shhh, Princess. I think this is the place. You don't want anyone to hear your crazy talk."

The open doorway to their right did indeed seem to lead into the archives hall. At least, the legend on the frame said as much.

Inside, an old man sat on one of the fashionably low stools common throughout the palace. A writing board lay across his lap. On the board was a sheet of paper to which he was vigorously applying a brush and ink. Hezhi found herself instantly fascinated by the speed with which the characters flowed from his brush tip, the grace with which they lay on the paper afterward.

It took him a moment to look up.

"Yes?"

Hezhi nodded to Tsem, who bowed for her, then announced her. "Princess Hezhi Yehd Cha'dune, ninth daughter of the Chakunge—Lord of Nhol. She is here for instruction."

The old man blinked. Hezhi could see that the scarf wrapped around his head hid a nearly bald pate; his thin face crinkled naturally into a scowl as he carefully placed his brush upon the ink-mixing stone.

"Child, what do you want of me?"

Tsem started to speak, but Hezhi waved him back with what she hoped was a suitably imperious gesture. "My father wished that I should learn more of writing, of science, and of… architecture. You are to instruct me in these things."

The old man narrowed his eyes, as if fascinated by some strange insect he had just discovered on his morning meal.

"I've had no notice to that effect," he said at last.

"No matter," Hezhi snapped impatiently. "I'm here."

"So you are. But I am busy." He took the brush back up and began writing again.

"Who are you?" Hezhi demanded, in as imperious a tone as she could muster.

The old man sighed, paused in midstroke. He finished the character and laid the brush back down. "You may call me Ghan."

"That's not a name. That's the old word for 'teacher.' "

Ghan set the writing board aside. "At least you know that much. What else do you know, little Princess?" She did not miss the thick sarcasm in the scribe's voice.

"I can read, if that's what you mean."

"You can read the syllabary, I'm sure. Every child can read that. But can you read the old characters?"

"Some of them."

"And who, pray tell, taught you that?"

There was something accusing in the man's voice, something that made Hezhi feel suddenly insecure, cautious.

"All Royal Children are taught that," she muttered.

"Oh, no, Princess. You will not lie to me. That is the first and only thing I will teach you. With a willow rod, if necessary."

Tsem growled. "You will not," he said.

"Hold your tongue, servant. You have introduced your mistress. I will not hear from you again unless I ask you a question. Indeed, you will wait outside."

"He will not," Hezhi insisted, taking a step nearer her guardian. "Tsem stays with me, always."

"Not in here, he doesn't. Not unless he can read, that is." Ghan looked up speculatively at the huge man.

Tsem could read, but Hezhi knew better than to admit that. Servants who could read were considered dangerous and were usually punished.

"Of course he can't read," Hezhi said, hearing her own voice falter. Her manufactured confidence was rapidly failing her in the face of this terrible old man.

"Then he can wait outside."

"No."

"Princess," Ghan said testily, "he can wait outside, or I can send a message to the court, requesting to see your petition to study here. That is what I should do in any case."

Hezhi hesitated a long moment before relenting.

"Wait outside, Tsem," she said at last. Tsem said nothing, but his expression showed that he did not approve of her decision. He padded silently to the door and took up a place just beyond it, so that he could still see in.

Ghan watched him go, betraying no satisfaction at having his order obeyed. He then rose and moved to the nearest section of shelves. After a moment's study, he selected a single volume, took it down, and brought it over to Hezhi.

"Open this to the first page and read me what you see there," he demanded.

Hezhi took the book gingerly. It looked quite old, bound with copper rivets green with age. The cover was of some animal skin, which marked it as being at least a century old. The cotton paper was still white, however, if very soft from age and use. Hezhi opened the book, gazed down at the faded black characters for several long moments.

"It's something about the Swamp Kingdoms," she said at last. "This part is talking about the annual flooding of the delta."

"Read it out loud."

Hezhi brushed her hair out of her face. She glanced toward Tsem, hoping for a little courage.

"Ah, let's see. 'Herein begins our—something—we undertake to—ah—something—the many divisions of the delta lands—ah— inundated—the many dams and levees—"

"Stop." Ghan reached over and took the book from her hands, gently closed it.

"I'm sorry," Hezhi whispered. "I just didn't know all of those characters."

Ghan sat back down on his stool. "I want to know how you know any of them."

"I have a few books."

"Do you? In the old script?"

"I have a copy of the Hymn to Bitter Lands."

"Who taught you to read it?"

"I also have a book about the old script."

Ghan crooked his mouth to one side. "You mean you taught yourself?"

"Yes."

"That would explain your awful pronunciation, wouldn't it?"

Hezhi felt herself near tears. "I didn't know my pronunciation was bad."

Ghan shrugged almost imperceptibly. "Why do you want to study here, Princess?"

"What else is there for me to do?"

"Go to parties. Court young men. You must nearly be a woman now."

"I don't like parties," she replied.

Ghan nodded. "Princess, let me tell you the truth. I'm a little impressed that you taught yourself this much of the ancient script. It shows that you have sense somewhere in that little head. It's not too rare for you royal brats to come in here and waste my time, to try to learn just enough to make sparkling conversation and impress the court. What is rare is a young woman who already knows how to read. If you were a man, Princess, I would not turn you away. I might teach you something. But you are not a man. In a year or two, you will be a woman, and you will marry some fair-faced fool, and he will not want you to be smarter than he is. Teaching you would be a waste of my time, and I have little enough time to waste."

Anger was lurking behind Hezhi's fear and intimidation, hidden like a cat. Now it sprang like a cat, suddenly and without warning. "I would not want to waste your time!" she snapped. "I don't care if you teach me anything. Just sit here with your stupid pen and your stupid ink, and I'll find whatever I need. I'll teach myself, like I always have. Just leave me alone and stay out of my way!"

Ghan shook his head. "One must be taught how to use a library, whether one can read or not. You want to know about architecture. Do you think the books that treat that subject are somehow going to leap out at you? You think we keep them all together?"

"I don't care! I'll find what I want!"

Ghan stared at her, and beneath his skeptical gaze, Hezhi felt her anger begin to retreat once more. Without its heat, it was difficult to withstand Ghan's scrutiny, but she forced herself to, even when her anger was stone cold and she became frightened at her own outburst. She wondered if she should add a "please?" to her last statement, but now her jaw seemed frozen in place.

Ghan nodded suddenly. "Very well. You will be very quiet. You will never speak to me. You will be very careful with my books, and the first time you tear one sheet of paper, I will send notice to your father and have you barred from this place. Do you understand these conditions, Princess?"

Hezhi nodded dumbly, at last letting her gaze stray to the richly embroidered carpet beneath her feet. "Yes, Ghan."

"Good." Ghan took his writing board back up into his lap, retrieved his parchment, brush, and ink. He did not look back up at her.

Her knees shaking a bit, Hezhi turned to confront the hundreds upon hundreds of shelves that seemed to lead back into infinite depths.

Like the darkness, she thought to herself. Two years ago, I stepped into real darkness for the first time, searching for D'en. Into the unknown.

Here I go again.

"Confusing," Hezhi told Tsem, as the wind fluttered the cottonwood leaves above their heads. "You could know exactly what you want and never find it. But I made progress, I think."

"What are you trying to find?" Tsem muttered, scratching at an ant bite on his hairy lower leg. Nearby, water gurgled in an alabaster fountain beneath a sky of lapis lazuli and gold. The roof garden of her mother's apartments was one of Hezhi's favorite places.

Hezhi snorted. "You know. Maps. Old maps, drawn before this city was built upon the flooded one. Maps I can use to figure out how to get to D'en other than by the Darkness Stair."

"If D'en is even…" Tsem cut that off; how many times in the past two years had they had this argument? The given was that Hezhi would assume D'en was alive until she had evidence that he was not.

But this time Hezhi's face clouded, not with anger, but with sorrow. "I… Tsem, I'm not sure I remember what he looked like any more. He had black hair like mine, and a little round face… Sometimes I wonder if it's even him I'm trying to find, now. But I loved him so much, Tsem. It seems like a long time ago, when I was very young…"

"You are still young, Princess," Tsem reminded her. "Master Ghan is right. You have other things you could be doing."

"Oh, yes," Hezhi responded sarcastically. "Important things. Like going to parties. Like meeting men."

"Qey thinks…"

"I know what Qey thinks, and so what? Anyway, I'm not old enough for men yet. I haven't started my bleeding."

Tsem suddenly grew a shade darker and turned his attention intently upon the fountain. Realizing she had embarrassed him, Hezhi stood and walked to the waist-high wall that encircled the rooftop garden. The city of Nhol stretched out before and around her, a bone metropolis shimmering in the westering light. Her mother's garden occupied the southern wing of the palace, and though the towers and ziggurats of the central halls soared high above her to the north, nothing obstructed her view to the west, south, or east; this rooftop was the highest on the wing.

Now Hezhi gazed off east. Behind the palace, gardens and vineyards rolled out green for a thousand paces before they were bounded by the wall. Beyond that, vast fields of millet and wheat checkered the floodplain in black fallow and viridian cultivation. Not far beyond them, Hezhi knew, the desert began, the vast waste her people called Hweghe, "The Killer."

Tracing her finger along the stuccoed wall, Hezhi walked south, gazed out at where the walls of the palace faded seamlessly into the city, a jumbled, chaotic tangle of streets, shops, and dwellings. Near the palace, these were of comfortable size, but they seemed to diminish with distance. Though Hezhi had never been into the city, it seemed difficult to believe that her eyes told the truth about the most distant—and most numerous— houses visible to her. It seemed that they were no larger than Qey's kitchen—perhaps smaller.

East and south lay the River. Before him loomed the Great Water Temple, a seven-tiered ziggurat that blazed white, gold, and bronze, from whose sides four streams of water constantly cascaded, drawn up from the River by his own will. The two waterfalls Hezhi could see glistened like silver and diamonds. The River himself, beyond, was nearly too wide to see across. He lay heavy and cobalt, massive, unmerciful, unstoppable. A thousand colored toys bobbed upon his back: her father's great trading barges, fishing boats, houseboats, the tiny craft that could hold only one or two people. Foreign ships, beautifully clean and graceful of line, swept along beneath billowing sails, coming and going from the Swamp Kingdoms and the seacoast beyond like so many swans. All on the River, trusting—no, praying—that he would not capriciously choose to swallow them. People loved the River, worshipped the River, but they did not really trust him. The River had taken people in from the Killer, saved them, made them his own. The people of Nhol had no other god but the River—and his manifestations, the nobility. Like her father, who was part god.

Like herself. Like D'en, wherever he was.

An amazingly loud belch erupted suddenly behind her, and Hezhi smiled. Tsem was no god. He was mortal, pure-bred, despite his parents' different races. Mortal and happy to be so.

"Pardon me," Tsem said sheepishly.

Hezhi bit back a rude retort, but she did move upwind.

"It's not just the flood that buried the lower city, you know."

"No?" Tsem asked.

"I always imagined, la, and the flood covering the city, and then the Third Dynasty building this one upon that. But really, most of the lower city was filled in on purpose. To raise up the new one."

"So the next flood wouldn't be as bad."

"Right. The River isn't supposed to flood us, his children, but…" Hezhi shifted uncomfortably. "I've heard the River sleeps a lot. That sometimes we just have to fend for ourselves."

"Why not wake him up?" Tsem asked.

"I think that might be worse," Hezhi replied. But she made a mental note to look for books on that, too. Priests wrote most books, so there should be more than a few about the River. In fact, that might be another angle to consider. The new palace had aqueducts and canals crisscrossing it, so that the sacred water would always surround them, enclose its children. The old city must have had such ducts, too.

"There must have been at least a few pipes," Hezhi mused to herself.

"You've changed the subject, haven't you?" Tsem said, his brow wrinkled.

"Hmm? Oh, yes. The one useful book I found was on the reconstruction. There were no maps, and that was a disappointment. But it talked about what they did. They filled in the courtyards with sand and rubble. Houses back then were mostly courtyard, and the walls were even thicker than the ones in the palace are now, so with the courtyards filled in, they could build on top of the old buildings, even if the rooms were still empty. That's why the floor cracks in the old sections, sometimes, and there are spaces underneath. That's why we haven't gotten anywhere; even when we find a suite of rooms that aren't full of sand or water, we eventually hit one of those filled-in courtyards. But you remember that one pipe? The one we found about a year ago?"

Tsem grunted. "The one I couldn't fit into?"

"Yes. I bet that was one of the sacred water tubes, built to carry water to the interior canals and fountains."

"And? It was blocked off, too."

"It had collapsed. Recently, I bet. If we could just find those… If I knew where the old temple sanctuaries were…"

"Princess!" Tsem's eyes were wide. "Temples? We can't go into temples!"

"Why not? After all, one day there will probably be a temple dedicated to me, like there is one for my father."

"But not to Tsem, Princess. Tsem is not safe from sacrilege, and he guesses that you aren't, either, whatever you may think."

"Hmmf. Well, I'll find that out, as well."

"Princess, you spent all day in there and found only one book."

"You have to admit, it's better than bumping around in the dark the way we have been. In one day, I understand more about the problem than I did this whole past two years."

"Well, I'm all in favor of keeping you from bumping around in the dark."

"And yourself," Hezhi added.

"That, too," Tsem admitted.