Nikolai’s enrollment at either a gymnasium or a military cadet school, Nikolai had educated himself in his scraps of free time within these very walls. The Imperial Public Library was one of his favorite places in the city. And now, at two thirty in the morning, the building somehow seemed even grander to him, looming like a shadow too colossal to be restrained.
“Please tell me you don’t intend for me to break into the library?”
Galina looked down at him, for she was now hovering a foot in the air, since there was no one in the streets at this hour other than drunks, whose hungover morning stories would never be believed. (Which raised the question, again, of why Nikolai had to be dressed so neatly.)
“As if I would so disrespect a national institution!” Galina said. “No, I simply want you to reshelve some of the books inside. They have been misplaced.”
“Reshelve them . . . now? From outside?”
“Of course now, and of course from outside.” She threw her hands in the air. “Do you think we’re out here because I wanted a walking companion?”
“I—”
“The Game will begin soon. You can feel it, can’t you?”
Can I? Nikolai stuck out his tongue, as if he could taste the difference in the air. And in fact, he could. It was like . . . cinnamon. With a dash of death.
Nikolai’s stomach, which was already unsettled from being denied sleep, sank to the bottom of his boots.
Galina carried on as if her announcement about the Game were ordinary news. “There are five books slotted into the wrong spaces on the shelves.”
Nikolai took a deep breath. Don’t think about the Game yet. Focus on this single task. Besides, he was probably wrong about the air, for who’d ever heard of magic tasting like cinnamon? And taste buds that detected death were not to be trusted. Death wasn’t a flavor or even a scent.
“What are the titles of the books?” he asked Galina.
“You don’t need them. This is about concentration, Nikolai, and working under pressure.” She glanced up at the sky, and even though it was still pitch-black but for the streetlamps, she acted as if she could already see the sun’s first rays. “Tick-tock. I estimate three hours, perhaps less, before the underlings of the city begin to scurry about on their errands and someone reports you to the Tsar’s Guard.”
Nikolai’s stomach remained firmly splattered at the soles of his boots. There were hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of books in the library. And he had to find five that were out of order? In three hours? He sank onto the corner of the street and leaned back against a flickering lamp.
“Don’t be pathetic,” Galina said. “Oh, and don’t let anyone catch you charming anything, of course.”
Nikolai barely nodded. This had been drummed into him every time she gave him a lesson in a public place. He had to protect his identity. Galina was quite certain the other enchanter didn’t know Nikolai existed, but just in case, he had to hide who he was. It would give him the advantage of surprise when the Game commenced.
Of course, Galina hadn’t bothered telling him who the other enchanter was or how she knew in the first place. “I’m a mentor,” she’d said by way of nonexplanatory explanation, invoking again her long bloodline of ancestors whose task it was to train enchanters. “And in any case, it isn’t important who the other enchanter is. It will only distract you from focusing on what is important: making yourself the best enchanter you can be. Moreover, I’m quite sure my teaching is far superior to what the other mentor can offer. As long as you do as you’re told, of course.”
And so it went. Galina would make demands, and Nikolai would comply.
Now she drifted away from the library, down Nevsky Prospect, in the direction from which they had come.
“If only her lessons didn’t take place in the middle of the night.” But Nikolai took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles. Exhaustion could be overcome; he’d done it plenty of times before.
He tossed aside his self-pity and rose from where he’d sat against the streetlamp. He focused on the Imperial Library’s impenetrable walls. Imagine they are transparent, he thought. Imagine the walls are nothing but air.
They held on to their solidness for a moment. And then the walls seemed to shimmer before evaporating from Nikolai’s sight altogether, and he could see straight through them.