Keahi reached for the book, then stopped with her hand a few centimeters away. "We should wait for Kori for this one."
"Obviously," Arashi said, in a fair copy of Kori's voice, without any intention of being funny.
Lynea frowned at the chains. "Who chains a book?"
"Someone who didn't want it opened?" Feris said, staring aggresively.
Esen looked at the lock, then pushed his hands deep into his pockets, like he didn't trust them near it. "Probably someone who really doesn't like it," he said, and for once there was no joke hiding behind it.
They stood around it in the copper evening light, their mountain of rescued books dominating the table, until suddenly, the doors banged open.
Kori swept in with a pastry clamped between her teeth, stopped, took in the scene — the ring of Royal Scholars, the leaning mountain of books — and grinned at it. "Look at you! Not one of you dead under a dictionary. I owe myself another pastry."
"Where were you?" Lynea asked flatly.
