Kara knocked on the office door at exactly nine. The note with her breakfast had been brief: Meet me at 9 in my office. I await your decision. Enjoy breakfast. –Siera.

  Her watch was gone, along with her clothes, but the grandfather clock down the hall confirmed the time. Kara waited. Silence inside. Finally, footsteps. The deadbolt thudded. Lucas opened the door and waved her in.

  Siera was buried in a mountain of papers at her desk. Odd that her office wasn’t in the burstproof section. Maybe she had another one, but this one was clearly in use.

  Kara approached and stood silently. After thirty seconds, Siera gestured for her to sit, barely glancing up.

  “Well?”

  “I’ll work with you,” Kara said. “Though I still don’t know what that entails.”

  Siera pushed a stack of papers across the desk. “Recognize these?”

  Kara kept her grip loose on the papers, careful not to let her fingers tighten. No need to let Siera see how much this moment unsettled her.

  Kara flipped through them. Her notes in the margins confirmed it: this was the exact copy she’d been working on. But key pages were missing: the human sketch, the rare plant.

  For them to only have these—

  Lev. Cascades. The pages weren’t exactly labeled, but Lev knew how she organized things. What in the cascades had happened in that tower?

  And she was supposed to tell Siera about the human. A page that Siera didn’t even have. But if she said anything about missing pages, Siera might send someone back.

  To Lev.

  “Yes, I recognize them,” Kara said.

  “What have you already gleaned from them?”

  Kara couldn’t help but stiffen a little. Siera was on the board of one of the biggest archaeology companies in the world. They had to have translators. Surely, she’d turned copies over of these to someone.

  If she lied, if she said the pages contained something that wasn’t there… But if she gave Siera nothing, surely Siera would see through that too. Both dangerous. Both a gamble.

  Kara let memory bleed to her features, a skill she didn’t usually use, but Lev used constantly. She forced her features to the memory of a natural calm.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “I haven’t gotten through much,” Kara said. “But there’s a section about human experimentation that suggests people were on Aralin before modern colonization. The author was trying to understand why humans developed affinities, why their cells could house the symbionts, when their own couldn’t.”

  “Did they figure it out?”

  “No, not in the part I translated.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Mostly botany. The author was a botanist.”

  Siera frowned. “Novem is moving people around.”

  “Should that mean something to me?” Kara asked.

  “I was hoping it was because you’d found something.”

  Kara shrugged. “I’m not the only translator out there. Surely Novem would take something this important to others as well?”

  Siera’s expression wavered between suspicion and disappointment. She tapped a manicured nail against the desk. Finally, “I suppose that’s possible.”

  Kara nodded, maybe too eagerly. Bursts. Calm! She could do this. It was just like lying for Lev. Siera was just a reporter. She’d done that a million times.

  “You’ve got catching up to do,” Siera said, waving Lucas over. “Take her to the same room as yesterday.” She looked back at Kara, her expression sharp enough to carve wood. “If you find something, let me know immediately.”

  Dismissed. Kara stood. Lucas ushered her out.

  Kara couldn’t ignore the feeling that she’d just become an employee instead of a “guest” and would probably be treated as such from this point out, at least an employee with joint prisoner status.

  “Shall I walk you to your office?” Lucas asked cheerfully.

  Kara nodded. She already knew the way but didn’t argue. Lucas started rambling about artwork again, as he had last night. Kara mostly tuned him out. Until—

  “This one,” he said, gesturing to a greenish horse sculpture, “was made by the last owner—Siera’s sister. An excellent blend of da Gorem and Vistlar styles, don’t you think?”

  Kara paused. “Siera’s sister made that?”

  Isi had mentioned the studio was her mother’s. How much of the art in this mansion was hers?

  Lucas blinked, surprised. “Yes. Most of the sculpture work in this house was done by her.”

  Lucas seemed to notice Kara’s shift in interest. She redirected him. “Are there more Vistlar pieces here? I noticed some Serene-era influences, but the horse is the only one with that flowing movement.”

  Lucas lit up. “Oh yes! Mainly on the lower floors…”

  Kara let him ramble until they arrived.

  “Well, thank you,” she said. “That was enlightening.”

  “We’re all counting on your work,” Lucas said brightly.

  “Yes. Better get to it,” Kara said.

  He left. Kara slumped into the office chair. What now?

  The stack Siera gave her was mostly unhelpful, pages she’d already deemed low priority. She’d taken the morning to memorize the first half of the pages after Marcus had dropped them off. Her memory was nearly photographic, given a little time and a lot of concentration.

  She swiveled over to a table and started writing out notes in the shorthand she and Lev had invented as kids.

  It was easier to make the connections when she wrote things out. Aralini had many words and even letters that were context dependent. Other words still didn’t have known translations. She’d have to compare those to other documents from her memory. Every new discovery helped tease out new meaning. Still other words and phrases, Kara had never seen before, leaving holes in her translation or rendering entire sections unintelligible.

  There had to be something important buried in between the vivid descriptions and histories of plants. Kara just had to find it.

  Siera was right. Kara had plenty to do.

  [Lev] And here is my second extortion payment, or "rent", as the Archivist likes to call it. Looks like they have their own flavor of political entanglements and conspiracies. It's a little heavier than our archive, but if you are looking for something grim and horror-adjacent, check it out.