House of Winter

Chapter 25, Part 2

Lumi ate dinner with more of the Reunsgardian council members. She was introduced to more people than she could remember names. Everyone seemed to want to meet her, and none of them used her title or bowed to her as they would in the Volcano Palace. Instead, they referred to her as the daughter of Reunsgar, or the daughter of Lumivara, or worst of all, as Lumikki. She was beginning to hate the pet name that the Reunsgardians had forced onto her.

"Do you know where Doctor Hart and Tom are?" Lumi asked, when dinner was well and truly over and tea was being served. She felt lost and alone, in a crowd of strangers who all acted as if they knew her.

"They're still in the library, Lumikki," one of the council members said. "If you're so desperate to join them, we can have a servant lead you there."

Lumi followed the servant through the icy hallways of the pyramid. Inside these walls, it was impossible to know whether it was night or day, but Lumi felt a shiver of unease walking through the hallways lit by lines of flame.

The library was admittedly not as impressive as the library she'd seen in Lombardia, but it still took her breath away. The ice walls were reinforced with stone, and shelves of metal lined the walls. There were books, but when she approached the nearest books she found they weren't bound with paper and printed with ink, like any book she had seen before. She couldn't identify what they were made from, until a voice disturbed her.

"It is sealskin," Doctor Hart's voice carried across the room. Lumi hadn't noticed her, sitting on a small metal chair.

Now that Lumi rounded the corner, holding a book in hand, she saw that Mondli and Kobuk were seated behind Doctor Hart. When Lumi saw Tom, leaning against his black wolf, she had a sudden feeling of relief and safety. This was a strange place, but with Tom she didn't feel so alone.

"Sealskin?" Lumi asked.

"Painstakingly flayed, thinned, dried and cut to make pages for a book. It is not paper. It is sealskin."

Lumi dropped the book in her hand, horrified.

"The books are made from the skin of a seal?" she said.

Tom was on his feet, scooping up the book that Lumi had dropped, and putting it randomly onto a shelf. "Kobuk missed you," he said. "How was the training?"

Lumi stared into Tom's dark eyes. "It's..." she glanced at Kobuk, and then back at Tom. "It's hard," she admitted. "I know that I can do it. But every time I try to quell, I hold myself back. I'm terrified."

"Because of what happened in the forest?" he asked quietly.

Lumi nodded.

"We've been here all day," Tom said. He didn't give her a meaningless platitude, or try to give her advice. He knew there was nothing he could say that would make Lumi forget the feeling of killing one of her own people. But he changed the topic deftly, and she was grateful for that.

"I've been reading to Doctor Hart," he said. "There are plenty of books in the Starg language here. We've read an interesting book on the development of the democracy of Reunsgar. It's interesting, because at school we were always taught that democracy is impossible to achieve. Just look at Vastier. It's a corrupt and poor nation, full of infighting. We've always been told that democracy just doesn't work in practise. And yet seeing the way the original Reunsgardians cast down their ideas of how a democracy should work..."

"After a day of study, Tomas fancies himself a political thinker," Doctor Hart said. She eased herself to her feet. "I've been very interested in the history of Reunsgar. Many would find it difficult to understand why they would live such a remote life, with no contact with the outside world. They have treated us well - but I suspect they are being overly kind by offering us the richest of food items from their larder, and even that is just oversalted fish and preserved fruit. They usually only trade with other villages in Sredsibirsk once per year, when the suns return."