He turned and grinned through Margrethe’s mist of reddish hair at Daniel. “It doesn’t get used much anymore, but occasionally it comes in handy.”
“I’ll say it does,” Daniel said. His enthusiasm was real, but not quite as real as he tried to project in his voice.
He let his hand trail down Bet’s bare shoulder until she giggled again and pressed his fingers firmly around the stem of the refilled glass. Daniel traded sips, wondering if on another day Candace would loan him the aircar to run out to this wonderful region on his own.
Adele Mundy made a point of reaching the library at precisely the second hour of daylight, half an hour before the time she’d set for her Kostroman staff to arrive. She doubted whether any of the locals would appear today—any who did would be too hung over to work—but she wasn’t surprised to hear the whine of saws and glue guns from inside as she approached the open door.
“Sun, are you blind?” Bosun’s Mate Woetjans demanded as Adele entered. The petty officer didn’t sound angry so much as marvelling at Sun’s misalignment. “Bring the left end up! The marks set the bottom of the crosspieces, not the tops.”
As if part of the same discussion, Woetjans turned and tipped her soft cap to Adele; she must have seen the librarian’s reflection in a windowpane. Woetjans didn’t miss much of what went on around her.
“Good morning, Ms. Mundy,” she said. “Sometimes I think this lot hasn’t any more sense than my daft old mother, but you needn’t worry: the job’ll be done and done right before we leave it.”
“I wouldn’t dream of doubting you, Woetjans,” Adele said as she surveyed the work thus far.
The day before the sailors had switched to using sheets of structural plastic in place of wooden boards. Hogg had found a different supplier, Adele supposed.
The plastic was stronger, thinner, and more stable than the wood shelving of the earlier portion of the work. Some might quarrel with the orange cast of the material, but Adele’s priority remained getting the books up from the floor and spine out so that she could organize them. If she lived long enough she might let Master Carpenter Bozeman replace the plastic with high-quality cabinetwork . . . but then again, there wasn’t any possibility that she would live long enough for Bozeman to complete that job.
“We oughta have the lights working by noon,” Woetjans said, rubbing her hands together absently as she looked upward. Six sailors worked on scaffolding glued temporarily to shelf supports, hopping about twenty feet in the air with an apparent lack of concern as to what would happen if they missed their footing. “I’ve been talking to Hogg about ways to hide the conduits. D’you have any particular feelings about the way we rig that, mistress?”
“I honestly don’t care if you leave the wires bare, so long as there’s no safety hazard,” Adele said. “The room is a space to contain information in a usable form, that’s all. Aesthetics are someone else’s province.”
Woetjans glanced toward the doorway. Adele turned also, expecting Vanness or perhaps a stranger who was curious about the noise.
Markos’s female aide stood there. Her smile was thin, meaningless; as empty as her eyes. “Might I have a few minutes of your time in the gardens, mistress?” she said.
“Yes, all right,” Adele said. “Carry on, Woetjans.”
She walked out behind the aide. The pale young woman reminded Adele a great deal of the roof perch from which she’d watched the procession the day before: nothing whatever for a hundred feet, then a stone pavement.
The aide led down the helical stairs. They might have been strangers to one another for all the palace staffers they met on the staircase could tell. At the bottom Adele caught up with her guide and said, “I notice you’re a Kostroman yourself. Have you known your employer long?”
The aide stopped and looked at her. “I’m a messenger, mistress,” she said. “I do what I’m told, and only what I’m told. If you have questions, you’ll have to ask somebody else.”
Adele nodded curt assent. She was angry and frustrated, but it would be wrong to take it out on the aide. To prod the woman verbally would be pointless cruelty—safe enough because the aide was a flunky and unable to respond, just as a big carnivore behind bars can be teased. The aide was as much a victim of Markos, and of life, as Adele herself was.