Too Many Books

The next morning, Maeril ordered ale with breakfast.

Rishi looked at the cup, then at her.

She raised her eyebrows over the rim. “What?”

“It is morning.”

“Yes. I noticed. Very brave of it.”

“You ordered ale.”

“We spent months inside a library-monastery. If the gods disagree, they can file a complaint.”

She drank.

Rishi returned to his bread. The ale was thin enough that even dawn might forgive it.

Breakfast brought eggs, a little cheese, and a pot of something hot. Maeril sniffed the steam.

“Nearly tea.”

She tasted it.

“An insult to leaves.”

Their packs waited beside the table. Rishi’s was closed and tied. Maeril’s bulged beneath three loosened straps, its flap resting several inches above any place a buckle might reasonably reach.

She seized it by the top loop and pulled it upright.

Something collapsed inside.

Maeril froze.

Rishi set down his bread. “Maeril.”

“It is fine.”

A scroll case escaped beneath the flap and struck her boot. A wrapped book followed. Then another. Ink-stained cloth, two narrow boxes, a packet of notes, and a small corked vial spread across the floor.

The vial landed with a hard glass clink.

Rishi looked at it.

“Before you say anything,” Maeril said, “this is not as bad as it looks.”

A third book slid halfway free. Its weight pulled the whole pack after it.

Rishi caught the pack before it fell.

“Wizards do not travel lightly.”

“We would if everyone without a spellbook stopped asking us to fix everything.”

He picked up the vial between careful fingers. “Is this dangerous?”

“Only if opened by idiots.”

Rishi set it well away from the edge of the table.

Maeril drew the rest of her belongings into a heap around her chair. Every book seemed to have grown heavier overnight out of spite.

She held up the thinnest. “This is essential.”

Rishi nodded.

She chose another. “Also essential.”

“Of course.”

Maeril picked up a third and weighed it in her hand. “This is not essential in the strictest sense. Abandoning it would, however, make me an embarrassment to the arcane profession.”

“That sounds serious.”

“Wizards have standards.”

She tucked the book beneath her arm and glared at the remaining heap.

Rishi offered her the scroll case. “How many books are necessary?”

Maeril stared at him.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether the world intends to behave.”

He waited.

“It rarely does,” she added.

Rishi accepted this with a grave nod.

Maeril pushed a wrapped bundle into the pack. It stopped halfway. She turned it and tried another angle. The corner caught beneath a strap and dragged two books out of place.

Rishi watched for three breaths.

“May I?”

“No.”

He folded his hands on the table.

Maeril braced one boot against the chair and tried again.

The pack leaned away from her.

Her tail struck the chair leg.

“Fine. But do not look serene while you do it.”

“I will try.”

Rishi knelt beside the heap.

He emptied the pack instead of fighting it. Flat books went against the side that would rest on Maeril’s back, their spines alternating so no ridge pressed into her. He settled the heaviest boxes low and close to the center. Scroll cases filled the narrow spaces along either side. The vial disappeared into a pocket he made from the ink-stained cloth, glass held apart from every hard edge.

Nothing shifted when he tightened the first strap.

Maeril resented him more with every competent movement.

“You have done this before.”

“I pack bandages.”

“That is not the same.”

“Both need to be found before someone bleeds.”

Maeril opened her mouth, closed it, and pointed at him instead.

“Annoyingly fair.”

Rishi stood the pack beside her chair.

It stayed upright.

Maeril pressed one finger to the flap. The pack did not attempt revenge.

“I hate that you improved it.”

“I can make it worse again.”

“Don’t. I need the room.”

His gaze moved to the books still on the floor.

“That is the problem,” Maeril said. “Wizardry is not elegant, whatever towers and portraits would like everyone to believe. It is ink, paper, copying fees, powders in packets, glass things that break, and books that become vital the moment you leave them behind.”

Rishi kept his face solemn. “Can you fix everything?”

“Usually. That is why I suffer.”

His mouth betrayed him.

Maeril caught the smile and leaned toward him in triumph. “What I need is a bag that cheats.”

“A bag that cheats.”

“Space is a tyrant. Some bags have learned civil disobedience.”

Rishi looked at the pack as if reconsidering its character.

Maeril said, “A bag of holding is the common dream. Big inside, small outside, useful until someone handles it badly and makes reality angry.”

“That happens?”

“Reality is touchy. But a proper haversack—” She raised one finger as though invoking a saint. “That is civilized. Compartments. Order. Your hand finds what you need. No digging through socks and dried mushrooms while a goblin bites your ankle.”

Rishi looked from the loose books to her. “And you want one.”

“I want several. I would settle for one, and I would name it.”

“You would name the bag?”

“If it saved my back, I would honor it properly.”

He considered this. “How expensive is properly honored space?”

Maeril made a face. “Painfully. My entire path is expensive.” She tapped the book nearest her foot. “Spells cost ink. Ink, paper, and copying cost coin. Components cost more, and the people who sell them know this and have chosen evil.”

Rishi glanced at his own travel bundle.

It was small enough to offend her on principle.

“What?” he asked.

“You own a staff, a spare shirt, and the ability to look meaningful in rain.”

“I also have sandals.”

“Luxury.”

“My robes were given to me.”

“Of course they were.”

Maeril narrowed her eyes. “Let me understand this. You became powerful through breath, suffering, discipline, soup, donated cloth, and being impossible.”

Rishi took the question seriously. “Incomplete but accurate.”

She threw up both hands. “Meanwhile, I need ink that costs more than a mule because one wrong curve and the spell sulks itself to death.”

Rishi studied his bread with the concentration of a man choosing peace.

Maeril grinned and picked up the last book.

It would not fit.

She pressed it against the flap. The book waited with the blank confidence of a thing that knew she would never leave it behind.

“We will need coin,” Rishi said. “Food. Lodging. Road costs.”

“Not only.”

“Ink.”

“Exactly.”

“A bag that cheats?”

“Do not mock my dream.”

Rishi took the last book from her. He turned it sideways and slid it into the narrow space between two scroll cases.

It fit.

Maeril stared at the pack, then at him.

“I dislike how useful you are.”

“I can stop.”

“Don’t.”

She pulled the straps tight and bound an extra cord around the middle. The pack stood beside her chair, square enough to carry and still far too heavy.

Maeril took another drink of ale.

Rishi looked from her pack to his small bundle. “The road is going to complain.”

“Then it can join the line.”

He smiled.

Maeril saw.