Free The Twelve Kingdoms: The Mark of the Tala by Jeffe Kennedy

additional troops. Avonlidgh and Branli, in particular, preferred to keep their forces at home, to defend their own borders with the Wild Lands. Hugh stepped in to negotiate for Avonlidgh, Amelia trying not to look bored at his side, while Ursula seemed fired with a new light, arguing with the envoy from Branli.
    I didn’t understand any of it. Why would Father go to war for me? While I appreciated the sentiment and greatly preferred not to be thrown to the wolfhounds, it seemed unlike Uorsin to fight for me, his least-favored daughter. Something more was going on, and I needed information.

    As usual, everyone had now forgotten my presence, except in principle, so I took advantage of the moment. I fled to the library.
    At least the only people there were the ones who weren’t so fired up to get out and defend my honor. Books were never high on Uorsin’s list of priorities, unless you counted law books, which were kept in his study chambers for easy reference. The majority of Mohraya’s archives were relegated to a series of dank cellar rooms, part of the previous castle’s foundation, most of which had served as dungeons or cells for prisoners before the Great War. After Uorsin took power, he had prisons built throughout the Twelve Kingdoms, part of the Plan for Peace. The librarians complained regularly of having to keep the wood fires going constantly to keep the mildew away. Uorsin finally told his field engineers to make them pipes to carry the smoke away, but he wouldn’t give up good aboveground space to books.
    On days like today, the fires snapped with welcome warmth. I didn’t miss windows since all they showed was preparation for war. One I seemed to have caused.
    “Can I help you, Princess Andi?”
    All that had happened must have left me rattled, because I jumped inside my skin. Lady Mailloux blinked at me, her cinnamon-brown eyes concerned. “I did not mean to startle you, Princess.”
    “No, Lady, I am . . . a little on edge.” I surprised myself, confiding that so readily.
    She smiled, a soft curve of understanding. “If half the gossip is true, I’m not surprised.”
    “I feel quite certain that far less than half is true.”
    She quirked an eyebrow. “That does not surprise me either. So how may I assist you? You don’t often seek your answers in my books.”
    Oddly phrased. “Where do you think I usually seek my answers?”
    “If you don’t know, how would I?”
    Somehow I suspected that was a dodge. Up until now I hadn’t thought I had any questions. “I’m looking for books, histories on the wars, especially the Tala. And the Wild Lands.” And my mother, though I couldn’t yet articulate that.
    She twitched, smoothed it out. “So that bit of gossip carries merit, anyway. I’m sorry, Your Highness, that subject was interdicted many years ago. The official records were all destroyed.”
    She shifted under my gaze, demurely dropping her eyes so she looked off to the side, a sweep of red hair dropping over a white cheek.
    “And the unofficial records?”
    “I wish I could help you, Princess, but I cannot offer what I do not have.”
    “But you can show me the place where I might accidentally unearth something. Something overlooked, perhaps?”
    “I’m sure I—”
    “Look, Librarian Mailloux, I may not have spent much time down here, but I hear the petitions in court. Every one of these is precious to you.” I waved my hands at the towers of shelves, neatly stacked with books and scrolls. Beyond our circle of firelight, another room glowed, and a series after that. Endless cubbyholes of accumulated learning. “I’ve heard you say it before: all knowledge is worth having . I’m asking you to let me have it.”
    She tapped restless fingers on her brown trousers. Her nails were broken and stained with ink and dust.
    “What can I do in return?”
    Her canny brown eyes sharpened, and I knew I had her.
    “If there’s war, they’ll want their dungeons back again. For the