Dragonwitch by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

through my veins!”
    His voice shook the foundations of Etalpalli. I thought the Twelve would scream with terror and flee the storm of his gaze.
    They did not. They merely turned and retraced their path to the Mound and the circles of bronze.
    But the next day, they returned. Once more they called up to the heights of Omeztli: “Cren Cru commands. Send us your firstborn.”
    Once more my father denied them.

    Something about the smell of books made the library feel warm even when it wasn’t. A low fire burned on the hearth, and morning light began to creep through the narrow windows. It felt, oddly enough, like home to Leta. Indeed, it was more of a home to her than Aiven had been.
    Now months into her covert education, Leta was still very much a beginner. Nevertheless, the Chronicler sometimes requested her help with the laborious task of cataloguing all the piled-up scrolls and loose parchments not yet copied into bindings. He asked her to sort them according to scribe, which required not so much reading skill as ability to recognize individual handwriting.
    But sorting provided her ample opportunity to explore more deeply into the written word. She suspected she was better at it than the Chronicler let on. What’s more, she suspected he was tremendously proud of her.
    She glanced up at him from her place at the table where she sat sorting through a small box of old documents. He was bowed over his usual work of copying, having spent much of the morning mixing inks in a variety of vivid hues. How intent his face was, his brow indented with furrows of concentration. It was an intimidating face, truth be known, fierce somehow.
    But Leta found, as she studied him quietly from that angle, that those fierce lines had grown very . . . She paused, choosing her words carefully even in her thoughts.
    Dear, whispered the secret part of her. The lines of his face are very dear to you.
    Sentimental drivel, her practical side responded with a snort. And inappropriate besides! Have you ever thought as much of your betrothed? Have you ever tried?
    She frowned and focused once more upon her work. A bubbling wellof frustration, which had become all too familiar in the last few months, threatened within her heart. It took a certain amount of resolution to force it back down. So much foolishness!
    Shaking her head and selecting another document, she peered at it closely, then blinked, surprised. Up until this moment, she’d thought she knew the hands of all the scribes whose works were collected in Gaheris’s library. The Chronicler’s square script was familiar to her, of course, and the more rounded hand of Raguel, the former chronicler. These two between them had inscribed the bulk of the work to be found in this chamber, but there were other scraps of handwriting both spidery and elaborate, some with spelling more creative than she would have ever believed possible, some in foreign languages.
    But this hand was entirely new to her.
    â€œChronicler,” she said, frowning over the scrap of parchment. “Chronicler, who wrote this?”
    He leaned back in his stool, able from that high vantage to read over her shoulder. Leta looked up and saw him frown. Then he slid down and came over to the table, taking the parchment from her hand for closer inspection. His head came up no higher than hers, though he stood and she was seated. It amazed her sometimes how quickly she had grown accustomed to his odd appearance. Remembering how startled she had been that first day back last spring was enough to make her blush!
    The Chronicler was unlike any person she had ever seen before. But he was himself. Her instructor, her mentor, her—she hesitated even to think it, for it seemed wrong for a young woman to think such things of a young man several years her elder—her friend.
    But she hated the Wall.
    She watched now as the Chronicler inspected the piece of writing she’d found, and the silence