The Father landed hard on a wooden floor between two tall bookshelves.
He rolled onto his side and came up on one knee, breathing heavily. Dust drifted down around him. The room was dim and silent, lit only by grey light from a row of high windows. Shelves stood in long rows, packed with old books. The air smelled of paper and old wood.
He knew this place. It was the library on the eastern side of the fortress, the one they had rebuilt in the first winter. At this hour, with the city burning, there was nobody here at all.
A door opened in the floor three steps away. Yerin climbed out of it and closed it behind her.
She brushed the dust from her robe and looked at him. Her face was calm.
"We won't be interrupted here," she said.
The Father rose to his feet. He was taller than her by a head and twice as broad, and he looked down at her the way a grown man looks at a child who has wandered into the wrong room.
