As Cal left the inner ring, the stone monoliths of the Guild District gave way to buildings that were three stories instead of six or more, with actual shutters and not rune-warded glass. Storefronts appeared, including a shop with brass instruments in the window whose function Cal couldn't guess at. The pedestrians thickened and he saw fewer sedan chairs, with more people on their own two feet running errands.
His bruised and likely cracked ribs sent a stab of pain through his side, reminding him to pull out one of his healing potions and a handful of Vitality stones to get patched up. Shortly thereafter, he caught the attention of a middle-aged man sitting out front of a small cafe, reading a book.
"Pardon me, sir," Cal said, gesturing at what the man was holding. "I'm looking for a place that might sell some books. Are there any stores like that in Mirathra?"
The man set down what he had been drinking and pointed up the street, past a cobbler's. "Sure are, lad, sure are. Two streets that way, then left at the fountain with the fish. It's a hike, but keep going until you see the signs. Quills and scrolls, that sort of thing. You can't miss it."
"Thank you."
"Aye." The man brought his cup back to his lips and returned his attention to what he was reading, while Cal followed his directions onward.
The fountain with the fish was a squat granite affair where three carved trout arced water at each other in a permanent standoff, and the left turn past it had him marching in a straight line for over half an hour before he found what he was looking for. Buildings in what was The Scribe's Quarter were older and closer together. A wooden quill the length of his forearm swung over one doorway, while a scroll unfurled in painted iron hung over another. He walked the length of the street, passing dozens of related shops before one of the window displays stopped him.
A scroll on an easel long enough that its bottom curl touched the sill, the script running down its center looking blocky and angular and drafted in strokes that felt more built than written. He knew that shape from Mahina's letter.
Jackpot! Let's see if they have what I need.
The door chimed against a small metal striker when he swung it open. The shop's interior held two levels of access, and he read the taxonomy in a few seconds.
Open shelves ran against the two long walls, packed floor to ceiling with ladders on rails. Bindings in every color. Titles he could see included primers and grammars and A Survey of the Coastal Provinces and Culinary Traditions of the Southern Reach and half a dozen introductory histories. General knowledge. The stuff you could piece together from a competent tutor or time in a lecture hall.
The center of the shop was different. It held glass cases on iron frames under lock and key. The volumes inside had covers Cal found hard to evaluate, because most of them didn't even have titles at all and appeared to be journals. The handwritten placards next to each one helped shed some light.
"A field practitioner's notes on flame-working techniques."
"The personal correspondence of Master Alchemist Vellum Tarn."
"Journal of a spirit-beast hunter, southern archipelago, 341-358 A.C."
"Cognitive Architecture and the Runic Framework: a mystic's private notes."
Cal had to stop himself from drooling as he read over more of the descriptions of the showcases. The books lining the walls would be helpful, sure, but the ones inside the cases…
The proprietor emerged from a curtained doorway at the back of the shop and Cal could barely stop himself from staring.
The first thing he registered was height. The proprietor was tall, Cal's own height plus a full head, and wore robes of burgundy that fell in thick folds from shoulder to floor. The second thing was the face.
Spikey little bone protrusions covered the head like hair, atop light red skin. And below where a nose and mouth would have sat on a human face protruded a dozen descending tentacles from the jawline, thin at their base and tapering toward their tips. Resting flat against the front of the robe, the tentacles moved when the proprietor breathed. Slow, minute adjustments, like the shifting of a cat's tail.
The eyes were black orbs without visible pupils.
Syl’thik.
The knowledge sat in Cal's memory from Selara's private stock, which had held two natural histories that included a chapter each on Veraxus' minor sentient races. He knew the shape of what he was looking at, and more beside. They were innately gifted with telekinesis, and the historical texts had used the phrase thought tasters, being careful about their prose in the way academics got careful when the writer wanted to say "these creatures will rip the thoughts right out of your mind" without saying it outright.
Neat.
He kept his sudden unease from showing on his face.
"Welcome." The syl’thik spoke from behind its tentacles in a cultivated tenor, with an accent Cal couldn't place. "You are… unfamiliar… to my shop. What draws you today?"
"Hi. I saw the scroll in your window, the dwarven one. Do you have anything to help learn it? I've got correspondence from Kar'angor I'd like to be able to read for myself."
"Ah." The tentacles wiggled unnervingly, as black eyes roved over him. "I deem your interest genuine. The stock along this wall—" one long-fingered hand indicated the open shelves to Cal's left "—contains three primers in dwarven of varying quality. The one at eye level, third from the end, is the most valuable for a serious student."
Cal walked to the shelf and pulled the indicated book down. The volume was bound in forest green cloth, its spine stamped with the dwarven script in gold. Inside the front cover, a phonetic key mapped the blocky characters to their sounds in common. He flipped a few pages and found vocabulary tables and grammar sections, with example sentences that started simple and got harder. Standard pedagogical architecture. It appeared to be exactly what he needed.
And it cost two hundred gold.
Against the void ring's balance and the week he had to pad his purse, it wasn't a crisis. Heck, against the specific opportunity it represented it was a bargain. He was already looking forward to seeing Mahina's reaction when he met up with her again. What's more, he hadn't really put [Savant of the Mind] to proper use in a long while. It was time to remedy that.
"I'll take it."
"An excellent choice." The proprietor moved to a small counter. "The purchase includes a browsing allowance. Two hours of access to the open shelves, but not the cases." One tentacle lifted and pointed toward the glass. "Those are priced individually and may only be opened upon purchase. No refunds."
"You expect people to buy the content within, sight unseen? They'd have to put a lot of faith in you."
"My honor and reputation are built on my judgement of their value. Knowledge… is sacred. I would never betray it."
Cal could only stare for a few seconds and slowly nod, wondering at the strange creature. He held the primer a moment longer before setting it on the counter.
"One more question. Do you have anything cheap that's written entirely in dwarven? Something I can practice against once I've worked through this?"
The tips of the tentacles lifted from its robes and tapped an intentional cadence against its chest. The black eyes stayed on Cal a touch longer than was comfortable before speaking again.
"Inquisitive." The tenor was pitched in a tone Cal hadn't heard yet. "The pedagogical instinct is sound. A primer teaches the function of the language, but only unmediated text teaches the truth of it." It indicated a case to the right of the counter, low on the frame. "The Rek'grum dun Kar'angor. A general reference of the kingdom, its clans, its trades, and its histories, compiled by the scribes of the Second Anvil. The common translation would be Compendium of Kar'angor. Unabridged, of course. Yours for fifty gold."
"Sold."
The tentacles shifted again as it collected the second book. "Another thirty minutes shall be added to your browsing period."
The syl’thik ponderously counted the coin Cal laid out, entering two lines in a ledger with a small pencil, then slipped behind the curtained doorway to return a moment later with both volumes wrapped in plain paper. It slid them across the counter.
"Your browsing period… starts now."
Cal tucked both into his pack and turned toward the shelves.
Two hundred and fifty gold gets me a couple books and a limited subscription to the open stacks, huh? Who knew the denizens of Veraxus had a bundled service tier.
Somewhere on Earth a Senior Vice President of product was making a slick slide deck that said exactly this, and here Cal was standing in it. He shook his head, amused, and started towards the open shelves.
He worked systematically, opening a book and doing his best to sufficiently imprint every page into [Perfect Memory] so he could parse the material at leisure later. Two and a half hours was the constraint the proprietor had given, but his Impartments gave him workarounds.
While [Savant of the Body] helped his eyes track and his fingers flip, [Savant of the Mind] began processing some of the content behind the mundane task of scanning. The Imperial Academy: A Compendium of its Halls, Rites, and Notable Alumni. It held institutional history and selection criteria in the first chapter, including the requirements for admittance which were, unsurprisingly, being a noble, although there were a few interesting exceptions for merit. The volume also included the names of the seven Regents of Dawn who had cycled through the Academy's chancellorship in the last few centuries. All-in-all, the Imperial Academy was a pipeline that fed noble youngsters in and spit elite adults out.
Seems like West Point crossed with Harvard, plus a hefty side of Game of Thrones.
He turned pages at a speed that would have looked, to a casual observer, like a man skimming for a specific reference until he put the volume back and moved on.
The Sunforged Trials: Rites, Records, and Regulations, Twelfth Edition. The Imperial Academy book had referenced this, and Cal remembered Captain Hatch referring to the Reaping Tournament as being modeled after the Trials. It appeared to be a competition held every six years that allowed the great Illuminet houses to show off their scions and compete with one another, often being used as a stand-in to settle grudges that might have led to greater bloodshed otherwise. Honestly, it was a clever mechanism for a world-spanning empire, and served a similar purpose to the Adventurer's Guild hosting arena fights.
What interested Cal the most about the Trials was that one of the only ways for a non-noble to gain access to the Academy was through the open brackets. If the previous text was to be believed, the Imperial Academy was the premier resource for knowledge and training in the Dominion. It offered him the best chances to maximize his Impartments' potential and help catapult his ascension.
Cal turned the pages and continued to browse, collecting information on match structures, weapon categories, legal and illegal maneuvers. The differences between the regional, continental, and global Sunforged elite. A note, buried in a footer in chapter nine, that no non-Illuminet contender had reached globals in eighty-three years when this edition had been printed.
Yep, that tracks. The true Illuminet I've seen fight are utterly terrifying.
He finished perusing that volume and pulled out another. Kar'angor and the People of Stone: A Cultural History. It covered clan structures. The concept of hammer-debt, which the author defined and then spent thirty more pages nuancing. The specific practices around correspondence, which included a footnote that dwarven letters were often penned in their native tongue and translation forced, because the people abhorred the swirling characters of the common tongue.
Cal continued working the wall as quickly as he could, parsing pieces as he went. He was moving faster than he'd started. The pages were turning at a clip that would have raised an eyebrow from any casual observer, yet he wasn't worrying about the observer. He'd paid for this time, and he would make the most of it.
Coming off the wall after two hours straight, he rolled his shoulders and let his attention drift across the glass cases at the center of the shop. He needed a quick break because he was going cross-eyed.
One case stood alone and apart from its fellows along the wall. It sat on a separated iron stand near the back of the shop, in a pool of light from an angled runelamp overhead. The glass was thicker. The frame was reinforced with an inlay of some silvery metal that Cal's arcane senses found quite powerful.
The volume inside was small and bound in worn black leather, with no title or ornamentation of any kind. It looked like a working man's notebook that had been carried for years and then, at some point, promoted to a place of prominence.
"The private working journal of an anonymous warrior, containing personal observations, exercises, and insights compiled across their ascent to low Mastery of the bo staff. Provenance verified through custody documentation. Pre-Conquest."
Cal read the price and his mind boggled. The number on the placard was close enough to the total accumulated coin he had spent across every stone to reach the peak of E-Tier, and the comparison staggered him briefly. Because the person had written down their route to Mastery.
He stood at the case and allowed the thoughts he usually didn't let himself think about. The doubts that had plagued him since his reincarnation, of the Impartments he'd chosen from a list he'd not fully understood. At the time, he believed he'd made the right choices for the right reasons. But the other options had been so much more impressive, with their incredible powers and elemental affinities. Things with names that promised to make him a legend and help carry him home. There had been times throughout his stay on Veraxus where he'd doubted his decisions in that white void.
Cal looked at the book. The world had priced the written record of one person's Mastery journey higher than any other object in the shop by an order of magnitude. Mastery was, in this marketplace of coveted knowledge, the ceiling. And he had gained [Spear Mastery] with the Impartments he had in a matter of months, with what he considered a modest amount of effort. Nothing special.
He allowed himself a private smile as he walked back to the book wall. It didn't seem his selections with Vox were that foolish after all.
Cal lost himself in processing for the final half hour. His pulse had picked up as he felt the inevitable end creeping closer with each passing breath, and he pushed himself to gain as much as he could. He was three chapters into an economic history of the rune gate network when a voice spoke at his shoulder.
"Time."
Cal wasn't startled, as he'd kept an eye on the shopkeeper through [Sphere of Perception] as it traveled over. But having the tentacles there at the edge of his peripheral vision was definitely a bit unsettling. He closed the volume and slid it back onto the shelf, turning to face the creature.
The syl’thik stood an uncomfortable arm's length away, hands folded in the sleeves of the burgundy robe.
"Precisely two and a half hours," the proprietor said. "The terms of your browsing allowance are complete."
"Down to the second, I reckon."
"To the second. Yes."
The tentacles shifted and Cal couldn't read the expression, not in the parts of the face where he knew to look. He kept playing it polite and hoped he hadn't done anything to give offense.
"Thank you for your hospitality."
"And you, for your business. Return at your convenience." The syl’thik inclined the spikey top of its head. "The dwarven, when you have learned it, opens further doors. I have material behind the glass in that language that is not otherwise available in this city."
"Ah, uh, good to know. Thanks."
Cal walked to the door, chiming as he pushed through. The sound followed him into the street. He came out onto the cobblestones of the Scribe's Quarter and stopped briefly to look at the sky.
Aurum had almost descended, and Cinder still rode high. Second dusk was coming. He had spent longer in the shop than he'd planned, and the day had eaten itself, and if he didn't do something about it his stomach might eat itself too.
He hadn't dined since a piece of bread and a hard-boiled egg at sunup, before the walk to the North Fort. He looked down the street and saw signs at the far end, just through the gate that demarcated the gap between the merchant ring and the outer sprawl. Scholar-centric displays gave way to shapes like tankards and stylized cuts of meat.
Food was that way. Everything else could wait.