Lady Thief [on hold]

~ Chapter Ten ~

The elderly lady forced Key to suffer another two days of bed rest, just to make sure she was fully recovered.  The hours passed by agonizingly slowly for Key, each minute seeming like its own little eternity.  She couldn’t force herself to sleep, not after spending several days completely unconscious, so she was forced to pass the long hours by counting the grains of wood in the ceiling and humming random songs to herself.  It was a rather horrible thing on the ears because her humming had the vocal range of a piano that had been stepped on by an elephant.

Somewhere during the day, between the five hundred sixty ninth wood grain on the ceiling and a crude rendition of a Celtic folk song, which may or may not have been in D flat minor, Eren came in and told her that the three of them, Serenity, Eren, and Key, were heading back to Parise the next morning.  Key was going because the king had apparently sent for her himself, for some reason unknown to her.  Serenity was going because she was apparently needed at the castle to mentor a new empath, and Eren was going because, apparently, it was dangerous for two young women to go traveling across the countryside alone, especially if one was prone to injury and had just recovered from the second demon attack within the past month.  Well, it was proof that chivalry wasn’t really dead after all, Key noted to herself, but she had a feeling it was more for Serenity’s sake than for hers. (Or maybe that was just speculation on Key's part.)

During her wait, she pondered what the woman had told her about knowledge, and about how it was, in itself, its own kind of magic.  She supposed that it was true, to some extent.  Knowledge, information that is known to be true, is very powerful.  Knowledge and truth could build someone up or break someone beyond repair.  Knowledge could be used for good or for evil.  It could be used to manipulate other people very, very easily.  Withdrawal of knowledge could be power, at least for the people who are withdrawing it.  False knowledge taken to be true, or lies.  One could build entire kingdoms on lies.

It was then that she decided to try to soak up as much information as she could. 

Along the walls of the room she was staying in, there were shelves upon shelves with myriads of dusty old tomes clustered together, packed as tightly in as they could be.  When she inquired about them to the elderly woman, she said that Key was free to read what she like of them, so long as she was handled them with the utmost care.

Glad to have something to do other than count the wood grains on the ceiling, Key took to the books, soaking up information on endless topics.  It was more enjoyable for her than school because they were things that interested her.  In school you had to learn about mathematics and sentence structure, but the books were on subjects with intrigue.  She leafed through countless pages and looked at tons of books.  War Galleys of the 23rd Century.  A Field Guide for Magical Plants: What‘s Edible and What‘s Toxic.  Sword Makes of this Century and the Last.  Archery and its Inherent Dangers.  and even Origami: The Art of Folding Paper. The last wasn’t as intriguing as she thought it might be, but it was a bit interesting.  Still, even as she soaked up this new knowledge, she didn’t feel any sort of power or magic.  There was just an absence of boredom.

She looked out at the sky outside, where it looked like evening was just about settling in.  The elderly woman had suggested that she go to sleep after the sun set, but Key wasn’t feeling tired at all.  There was still time for at least one more book.  Turning toward the shelves, she picked up the oldest looking volume she could find.  It was so worn that words on the binding couldn’t even be made out.  Carefully, she pulled it free from its spot on the shelf, carried it over to the bed, and gently sat it down.  Key settled down and read the front cover to herself.

The Establishment of Our Dynasty

A history of the Modern Country of Europa