F l y n n

It was his lunch break. He’d started early, sorting through the piles of documents the king had signed the week before, organising them into piles, entering them into the catalogues and supervising their relocation to the correct part of the archive. His new assistant, who was slowly improving and who had not dropped any books in over a week, a record considering his earlier disasters, was manning the check-out desk below. Flynn however was reluctant to stray very far should a disaster arise.

That, and since Cal had been kept at work so late the night before, she was likely to be sleeping through lunch. Flynn preferred the quiet hush of the library to the loud voices of his teenaged brothers.

With Denahi on his heels, he climbed the first flight of winding stairs and began to prowl along the shelves on earth history, now neatly arranged in-line with the dewey decimal system. It had been an incredibly satisfying process, and it was now far much easier to direct people to the books and subjects they were looking for.

Flynn stopped in front the Irish history section, slipped Witches, Spies and Stockholm Syndrome from the shelf and thumbed to the end of chapter three. Denahi meanwhile curled up at his feet and promptly fell asleep.

Typical.

“Hey!” a voice said some time later, dragging his attention away. Flynn glanced up and spotted Thoth slouching towards him along the aisle between the shelves. He didn’t have chance to say hello back before the teenager ploughed on.

“Oh really?” he managed to put-in at last. “Well um…thanks? I’ll get right on that.”

Denahi jumped up, tail wagging and bounded towards Thoth, performing one of his enthusiastic pet me dances around his legs.

Flynn sighed with a good-natured smile.

“Yes Thoth, I’m Flynn. I was usually there when His Grace was setting fire to curtains.”

There didn’t seem to be a flicker of recognition until…

“Yes, that’s me,” he agreed, “archivist now I…”

He broke off and stood patiently as Thoth ploughed on. The boy’s careless revelation turned him cold. Fighting to keep his hands steady, Flynn placed his book slowly back on the shelf; dewey decimal system be damned.

“I need you to tell me exactly what the alliance people said, Thoth,” he pressed, all seriousness as he turned to face him. “Cal, the other captain, we were expecting her home last night, and she never came I…”

He hesitated. He was an idiot. He should have gone to look for her when she hadn’t come for dinner. He should have checked in her room this morning on the way to work, but he hadn’t wanted to wake her up if she’d had to work into the early hours.

“I need you to tell me anything you know. Anything at all.”