I walked toward the Town Records Office, maintaining my usual "Academic Stroll"—a slightly hurried, pigeon-toed gait that suggested I was worried about the humidity affecting my parchment.
Since the Academy had declared a "Day of Purification" (which usually just meant the janitors were scrubbing the soot off the walls), the children were home. But they weren't resting. They were mobilized.
Behind me, in the shadows of the stone archways, the "Infiltration Team" was in pursuit.
"Target is moving at three miles per hour," I heard a tiny whisper from behind a rain barrel. That was Arin. At eight years old, his whisper still had the carrying power of a stage actor's.
"He's using the 'Crowded Market' maneuver," Lysa hissed back from the cover of a weaver's stall. "See how he stops to look at the apples? He's checking the reflections in the fruit to see if he's being followed. He's a pro."
In reality, I just really wanted an apple.
I reached the Library—a massive, cold building made of grey granite that looked more like a fortress than a house of books. I climbed the steps, nodded to the guard (who was currently sleeping), and entered the Great Hall of Records.
I sat at my usual desk, a heavy mahogany beast tucked into a corner where the light was just right for reading faded ink. I pulled out the Tax Ledgers of 232.
Clack.
A small sound came from the balcony above me. I didn't look up. I knew Avaris was up there, likely perched on a railing like a gargoyle, guiding the children through their first "Live Surveillance" mission.
"Observation log: Hour one," Lysa whispered from behind a shelf of "History of the Southern Isles." "The Architect is opening the 'Great Ledger.' He's using a specialized tool... wait, it's just a quill. No, Arin, look at how he dips it! It's a code! Three dips for a 'Yes,' one for a 'Proceed with Caution.'"
I sighed and dipped my quill again. I was actually just trying to get a stubborn clump of dried ink off the nib.
"Look at the map he's drawing," Arin's voice drifted down from the rafters. "Is that a fortification? A star-fort?"
I looked down at my paper. I was sketching a cross-section of a clogged irrigation pipe. To an eight-year-old with an overactive imagination, a pipe with three outlets apparently looked like a triple-walled citadel.
"He's marking the 'Kill Zones,'" Arin whispered, his voice full of awe.
"No, Arin," Lysa corrected. "Those are 'Infiltration Points.' See the arrows? He's showing us how to bypass the Imperial Sentries using the sewer system. It's genius. He's teaching us the layout of the capital through plumbing!"
I decided to test them. I reached into my bag and pulled out my lunch—a simple sandwich wrapped in heavy wax paper. I unfolded the paper slowly, making it crinkle as loudly as possible.
The balcony went dead silent.
"New cipher detected!" Cyrus—wait, no, Cyrus wasn't there, it was just the siblings. "The 'Crinkle Code.' He's sending a message to the Sentry on the balcony!"
Above me, I heard a faint, rhythmic tapping. Tap-tap... tap. Avaris was playing along. She was tapping her fingernails against the wooden railing in response to my sandwich paper. My own wife was feeding the conspiracy.
"Message received!" Arin whispered. "The Sentry confirms the perimeter is secure. The Architect is now... consuming the evidence. He's eating the message!"
I chewed my ham and cheese sandwich with a sense of profound exhaustion. I was eating a sandwich, yet in the minds of my family, I was destroying a top-secret missive from the Northern Resistance.
I decided to go for the masterstroke. I stood up, walked to the "Restricted Section" (which just contained boring birth records from the last century), and pulled out a massive, dusty tome. I turned to page 412—a list of sheep-grazing fees—and pointed to a random number.
"The 'Golden Ratio'!" Lysa gasped from behind the bookshelf. "He found the coordinate! Arin, write it down! 4-1-2! That must be the distance in leagues to the hidden armory!"
I sat back down, a small smile playing on my lips. If they wanted a spy, I would give them the most "suspiciously boring" spy in history.
Suddenly, the front doors of the library creaked open. The air in the room turned cold. I didn't need to look up to know who it was. The heavy, measured thud of iron-shod boots echoed on the stone floor.
The Grey Cloak.
He wasn't looking for books. He was looking at the desks. And he was heading straight for my corner.
"Architect," Avaris's voice was no longer a whisper. It was a silent vibration in the air—a warning. I saw her shadow move on the balcony. She was coiled, ready to drop.
Arin and Lysa vanished into the stacks so quickly they didn't even leave a breeze.
The "Spy Game" had just become very, very real.
This was my moment. The "Ghost Architect" was about to deploy his most devastating weapon: Industrial-Grade Boredom.
I felt the Grey Cloak's presence before I saw him. The air grew heavy with the smell of expensive leather and cold iron. He stopped right at the edge of my desk, his shadow falling over my "fortification" (the irrigation pipe sketch).
"Master Verne," he said. His voice was like a whetstone on a blade—sharp, dry, and looking for a spark.
I didn't look up immediately. I finished my sentence in the ledger with painstaking slowness, making sure to cross my 't's with the rhythm of a dying snail. Finally, I peered over my spectacles.
"Ah! Master Courier! What a delightful surprise," I beamed, my face radiating the pure, unadulterated joy of a man who hasn't spoken to a soul in six hours. "Have you come to assist with the audit of the 232 Sheep-Grazing Levies? I must warn you, the records for the South Pasture are in a scandalous state of disarray!"
The Grey Cloak's eyes flickered to my ledger. "I am here to assess the... intellectual environment of the district's leading families, Ilyas. Your children showed... unusual 'stability' on the sensors yesterday."
I heard a tiny scuff from the bookshelf to my left. Arin was likely holding his breath so hard his face was turning purple.
"Stability! Yes!" I clapped my hands, accidentally knocking a small pile of sand samples onto the floor. "It's the diet, you see! High-fiber oats and a strict adherence to the 'Verne Method' of walking. I've taught them that every step must be a calculation of ground-pressure and moisture-wicking. Would you like to see my chart on the 'Correlation Between Wool Quality and Soil Acidity'?"
I didn't wait for an answer. I grabbed a massive, dusty scroll and unrolled it with such vigor that a cloud of ancient dust exploded directly into the Grey Cloak's face.
"Look here!" I shouted, pointing to a tiny, microscopic dot. "In the year 214, the North-Western ram population suffered a 4% decrease in lanolin production. Do you know why? Of course you don't! It was the silt! The silt-to-clay ratio was off by 0.02%!"
The Grey Cloak coughed, waving the dust away. He tried to speak, but I was a landslide of academic trivia. There was no stopping me.
"And then! Oh, then we have the 215 records," I continued, leaning in so close I could see his pupils vibrating with irritation. "I spent three years—three glorious years!—tracking the movement of a single irrigation ditch in the Lower Basin. If you look at these 400 pages of sub-notes, you'll see that the water didn't just flow; it negotiated with the bedrock!"
"Verne, I really must—"
"But wait! You haven't seen the section on 'Tax Exemptions for Salt-Licked Stone'!" I reached for another heavy book, making sure it landed on the table with a bone-shaking THUD. "It's a thriller! It starts with a disputed fence line and ends with a fourteen-year legal battle over a muddy pond. I have the transcripts right here!"
I saw the Grey Cloak's hand twitch toward his sword, then hesitate. He looked at me—truly looked at me. He saw a man whose eyes were gleaming with a terrifying passion for paperwork. He saw a man who would gladly talk about sheep-dung for the next four days without blinking.
He looked up toward the balcony, where Avaris was hidden, then back at me. He looked at my "Kill Zone" sketch of a toilet pipe.
"You are..." the Grey Cloak began, his voice trailing off as he searched for the word. "...extraordinary, Master Verne. In a very specific, and deeply exhausting way."
"Thank you!" I chirped. "Now, about the sheep—"
"I have seen enough," he snapped, taking a step back as if my boredom were a contagious disease. "If the father is a man who finds excitement in salt-licked stone, then the children are... simply products of a very dull environment. There is no 'Peak Capacity' here. Only... bureaucracy."
He turned on his heel and marched toward the exit, his boots echoing with a desperate need to be anywhere else.
Silence returned to the library.
A moment later, the bookshelves "sneezed." Arin and Lysa tumbled out from the history section, their eyes wide with disbelief. Avaris dropped from the balcony, landing as silently as a shadow.
Arin looked at the door the Grey Cloak had vanished through, then back at me. "Father... you just... you used a 'Linguistic Fog' maneuver. You neutralized an Imperial Agent using only... sheep."
"I was just talking about my work, Arin," I said, calmly smoothing out my ledger.
"No," Lysa whispered, her voice full of newfound respect. "You just gave us the ultimate lesson. You didn't hide from him. You made him want to hide from you. The 'Ghost Architect' doesn't fight with swords. He fights with... data."
Avaris walked over and placed a hand on my shoulder. She leaned down and whispered in my ear. "That was the most brutal interrogation I've ever witnessed, Ilyas. I actually felt sorry for the man."
I smiled and picked up my quill. "Well, someone has to keep track of the sheep-grazing levies. It's a vital part of a functioning society!"
Arin stood at attention and saluted me. "Mission accomplished, Architect. The target thinks we're idiots. We're safe for another week."
I sighed. I had saved my family, but at a terrible cost: my children now believed that my 400-page treatise on mud was a weapon of war.
The library is secure! The Grey Cloak is officially "convinced" of the Verne family's mediocrity.