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They reach a point where the passageway ends, joining with another, even wider and well swept. This passage is lit by candles, set into sconces in the wall.

The sight of the candles makes Damon even more uneasy. Who came this way and lit these candles? How recently and for whom? He needs to find another route onwards and fast.

A little way along the candlelit passage, they pass a wide iron gate set into the wall. Locked. Damon looks through it. Through the gates, he can see shelves packed with books and papers.

The library.

The library under the Sarelik Temple.

As he looks he remembers the Hare telling him about it. The writings of Batraeous. Written in secret in Old Magaar. Does the Hare know Ur-Ambolk too? If Damon had shown the Hare Lyr’s chest when they were alone in that small room off the Hall of Twelve, would he have read those runes and told Damon what they said. Would Lyr then have had the chance to explain?

And then, almost as if Damon’s thoughts had summoned him, there is the Hare. A whisper of grey fabric moving amongst the shelves. Damon draws back, out of sight and gestures to Opeth and Trysta to stay behind him.

The Hare. Would the Hare help them? He’s one of the Order of the Enforcer. He works for Gelen the Green. But Damon trusts him with his gut. He protected them, warned them about Atticul. He helped him during the Justice. He’s all Damon has.

Damon moves back in front of the gate and calls out, as loudly as he dares, “Hare!” the Hare turns around, expression hidden behind his veil.

Trysta says, “Damon?”

Damon turns to her, “I trust him,” he says.

And when he turns back the Hare is on the other side of the iron gates saying, “You can. Trust me, that is. Quickly, Damon Darekul, come this way. It is safe for you in here.” He’s unlocking the gates with an ornate key.

Damon hangs back, watching the empty passageway as he sends Opeth and Trysta inside first.

The library is even bigger than it looked through the gate. The Hare leads them past dozens of shelves, some heavy with dust, untouched for years. They are deep in the paper maze when the Hare shows them to a spot where a table is set with chairs around it, candles burning on piles of paper.

“Please,” says the Hare, “sit down. You are as safe here as you can be anywhere in the Rose Palace.”

“We don’t have time,” says Damon. “We are bound for the dungeons.”

“Yes,” says the Hare. “For your lover?”

Damon nods. “Does he live? Do you know how he has been treated?” His heart beats harder as he asks, fearing an answer he dreads.

“He lives. He has not been tortured although it has been spoken of, but he is delicate. He wants death, they say. He pines and eats little. The fear is that if the enforcers were allowed to use their sharp methods on him, he would not survive it.”

Damon feels himself bristle.”If they had, every one of them would meet death on my blade.” He pauses to glance at Trysta who is watching him calmly, sitting close to Opeth. Then he looks back to the Hare. “Why are they so keen that he be kept alive? He is sly. He has confessed to sins of the body and he was discovered assisting me in exile. Why has he not been ripped apart in the square?”

The Hare says, “Prince Atticul has boasted that you were found making love to the slave unaware he had your name branded on his chest.”

“Yes,” says Damon, emotionless, “The runes on his chest are my name in Ur-Ambolk”

“Ur-Ambolk is a rare language even among the people of the Amber Forest. Very few people in Azuria can read Ur-Ambolk. One of those people was Pershel the Moon Truth. She is a scholar of heathen magic. Chancellor Vindar brought her to your slave, before he escaped, to discover what rites Jareleezi had performed with him. She was the one who read the runes on your slave. She demanded he not be sent with you to Sanvicta so she could study him further, but the following morning, she was dead. She had taken snap adder venom after she saw what was written on your slave’s body.”

Damon lifts an eyebrow. “She took snap adder venom because she read my name on Lyr’s chest?”

The Hare shakes his head. “She read those runes. She told Vindar what they said and he reported that to the Rose Court. But that was not what made her take the venom. She took that venom because of what she read on his back.”

His back. Damon had forgotten all those tiny symbols. “Is that Ur-Ambolk too?”

“I believe so. That is why they are keeping him alive. To decipher what it says there. Although without Pershel the task proves difficult.”

“Are you the one translating it now?” Damon says.

“No,” says the Hare. “They have not allowed me to see it. I am not the most trusted person in the Temple of Zai.” He smiles as if this is a small point of pride.

“Do you know a way out of the temple? A secret way. We need to get to him.”