The chill air awoke Nell at last, and he opened his eyes to darkness, the lamp having burned through its dregs of oil, the window open and a sharp winter wind billowing the curtains in.
He raised his head off the desk and a piece of paper came with it, stuck to his cheek. Probably ruined the ink, he thought, plucking the page from his face and blinking at it in the dim light of the moon, but with no lamp he couldn't make out the words nor tell if they had smudged.
He rubbed his cheek and sat huddled at the desk for a bleary moment before rising to shut the window. What a place for the latch to fail. These old tomes couldn't take bitter, cold air eating away at them. Most of them were near to disintegrating as it was. This particular room of the library was his favorite, holding more shelves of ancient texts than he could decipher in a lifetime, a fact both exhilarating and sorrowful. Most of the books were of a purely historical significance but some few guarded arcane spells and yet others were dangerous even to touch. They were all incalculably valuable, worth sums of gold he could scarcely guess at. That was part of his job here, night after night, to find those books too perilous or too precious to remain here in the library proper, those that needed a more secure resting place.
Nell pushed his glasses up on his nose and spared a glance out the open window at Arca below. The lights of the city glowed lovely at night. As he closed the window, he caught his dim reflection in the tinted glass—he looked fire-touched, hair a bright crimson and eyes glinting gold back at him—but it was a shadow of movement behind him, seemingly at the other side of the room, that caught his attention.
A trick of my eyes. Sleep yet weighed them and fogged his head, though the cold air was spurring him to full alertness quickly enough.
After checking the latch and pushing the curtains back to provide a bit more moonlight, he hugged his arms about himself and sighed at the desk with its stacks of books and half-finished translation. Hunt down more lamp oil and continue working, or find a bed and catch the rest of his sleep? He hadn't the slightest idea what time it was.
"Well, I'm awake," he said aloud. "Might as well stay that way." So he started down the dark, tight spaces between the shelves, making his way by memory toward the door.
