Chapter 1
The water had been flowing as it should, down through the channels that lined the walls. Then, one of the stone pipes gave away, a hairline crack finally letting go. Yuvellaiyah Chloe Huldah Zytnia stared, dazed, becoming more detached as the seconds poured away.
The archives would begin to flood within minutes.
Precious documents. History. Destroyed.
Her research into the lost civilization, her greatest worry over the past three months, receded in importance.
This was urgent.
And yet, she stood still, aloof, unsure what to do next.
She saw movement in the corner of her eye. She took the moment and transformed the movement in her eyes into movement in her wide jaw.
“Fenna?” She yelled.
“Your excellency?” A young female voice responded from the next room. “The water in the little culverts have stopped.”
“Get in here.”
The floor already had a thin film of water.
Chloe Huldah ran calculations.
Fenna entered, almost at a run. She saw the issue immediately and ran for the broken pipe, but she didn’t have enough strength to do anything.
The room was an odd hexagonal shape, with deep troughs cut into the edges. It was a complex system designed centuries ago to prevent heavy rains, and even floods, from drowning the priceless, unique documents. And when was the last time it was maintained?
Huldah sighed. She began to move toward the broken pipe. Her height carried her across the room in only a handful of strides.
She wore a long-sleeve, light graphite grey wool coat without buttons, pants, and a frontcloth, which was a sort of skirt that covered the front and back, leaving the sides open to facilitate running and free movement. Her pants were the same grey wool, the frontcloth a pale cloudy morning grey-blue.
“See if you can find a tool. It has to be of a material harder than stone. Find me a metal bar or something.”
Fenna looked dazed, watching her mistress approach. “Metal…bar? …in the archives your excellency?”
Huldah frowned.
Despite her words, Fenna ran out of the room.
The shelves were not distinct units, instead they were cut into the stone walls of the underground network of chambers. There was no bottom shelf exactly for this reason. Flooding. This was the only reason they had so much time.
She lifted a thick leg, leaned her torso back to counterbalance, and gave the pipe a heavy side-kick. A small portion of the stone exploded gently, flowing into a mess lower down the water flow.
Fenna returned then, empty handed. She looked panicked. She will not be thinking straight, Huldah thought.
The stream eased, then got caught in the shattered stone and began to spray around the room.
“Oh no.”
Huldah gazed around the room, lifting her hands to block the water. The spray had begun wetting some of the ancient texts that surrounded the two women.
“I need you here Fenna.” When she saw the young woman remaining dazed, Chloe added, “Now please.”
Fenna ran over.
“Block it as I am.”
Huldah waited until Fenna’s hands were positioned in front of her own before stepping away. Striding around the room, she shut the stone cabinet doors on the shelves. These were to prevent damage from fire and air exposure.
They would help with the spray, some of which was still making its way past poor Fenna’s hands. But water could still get through cracks, or drip down from the walls into the shelves. Into the valuable books and scrolls.
Fenna was doing the best she could with her dark hands, but it wouldn’t be enough. The water now fully submerged Chloe’s feet.
Y. Chloe Huldah Zytnia sighed and placed her hands on her hips to think. At least, she thought it helped her think, like a thinking cap. That’s what she told herself when she was younger anyhow.
Her arm brushed against a hilt. Her sword. It was a curved sabre, a common self defence sword in her country. It was not her weapon of choice, but she knew how to use it well enough. Her ideal weapon was unfortunately far too unwieldy for daily use, especially in the capital city.
She drew it, and in one swift motion, arced the blade up and around, slamming it against the stone and spray. A little gave way, but it wasn’t enough.
“Careful, child.”
She stepped closer and thrust the point between two of the larger broken pieces, then used the sword as a lever. It broke away, and the spray halved in pressure. The water particles no longer travelled far enough to hit the walls, or the shelf covers.
Huldah continued manoeuvring rocks around. Somehow they had ceased tight despite the water flow. Or because of it…
Finally, she moved enough stone that the water diverted to the ground.
“I still need some sort of tool if you can find one,” she said, moving to the drain hole. It was full of broken rock, moss, and other detritus she didn’t care to examine closely.
She went at it again with her sword, and it opened quickly.
The water, now at ankle height, began to recede.
“Oh, never mind.”
“Thank God,” Fenna said.
Chloe sat in a plush reading chair near the wall. It was not against the wall, as every horizontal surface save was covered in books, save the doorways. “My goodness,” she said, sighing heavily.
Fenna moved to sit in a similar chair next to her.
“Wait, before you sit, check the other drains please.”
Fenna obliged.
“All filled with moss and mess,” Fenna said.
Chloe Huldah nodded. She leaned her elbow on the plush leather arm and rested her cheek on her knuckles, fingers open a little. Her yellow-blonde curls, a little wet now, flowed over her forearm.
“Of course…we should have checked all this when we arrived. We should have checked it last time we were here. I will make sure the task is added to the archivist’s duties.”
Fenna nodded.
The last time they were there was three days ago, and it was Fenna’s first. Fenna, a young student at the university, knew of its library, and had even been to the royal academy archives.
But all that was wood, square rooms, and pleasant energy.
The official underground royal archives were another matter. Cold, stone, practical, and jarring. A maze-like network of oddly shaped rooms cut into stone.
“Will it be alright?”
“For now, yes. We will clear the rest of this room before we go and let this,” she kicked at what was left of the water with an outstretched toe, splashing it a little, “recede fully. Then we will report the mess to the archivists. I will authorize a couple of guards to aid them this time, since it will be extra work. They should be able to upkeep fine.”
Fenna glanced at the scrolls on the wood-topped stone desk to their right.
“Did we get everything?” she asked.
“No, but it is enough for today.”
“Yes mistress.”
They had come for a set of ancient documents about a lost sibling civilization. Her nation, the Solune people, were the children of an ancient community of tribes called the Sollussa. According to legend, and some of the texts she had researched in the last few months, the Solune were the ones that broke away.
They left, and thus took part of the parent community’s name off of their own.
Sollussa became Solune. So-lune.
She stood and walked to the desk. One scroll was unfurled, held down by polished brass weights.
She read aloud. She did not like to read out loud, but her father told her it was better for learning and retention to hear her own voice as she read, she she had started here and there long ago. Now that she had an assistant, she was inclined to try the good habit more frequently.
Fenna was not only a maidservant, but a research assistant. In fact, correctly addressing Chloe as “your excellency,” or sometimes, “mistress,” was her most frequent servantly behaviour. For the most part, Fenna Alh-Bkhyl Shlam B-Belh and her impossible to pronounce full name, was more a research aid than anything else.
She held the position in part thanks to her mother’s recommendation. Chloe had not particularly wanted an assistant, but Fenna’s mother, a black-haired woman with rich bronze-brown skin, had mentioned that her daughter was a history student.
Chloe Huldah managed for once to pick up on the social cue, and invited the young woman for an interview. When that went well, she took on the position part time.
When classes closed for the interim semester, Fenna Shalom B-Belh began to work full time. She only had her for a few more months before things returned to only a few hours a week. So far, she was taking advantage of the extra help by going in depth in her Sollussa research.
She read, translating for the first time.
“From the hand of Yitro Zytni, man of letters…”
She stopped at the first line, eyes wide.
Zytni. That was her name. Yuvellaiyah Chloe Huldah Zytnia, daughter of Rhye.
How?
Daniel Triumph
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