Free Cybele's Secret by Juliet Marillier

was seated at a table on the lower level and was busy writing. Irene had not returned. In a shadowy corner of the library, there now sat another woman, black-robed, with a needle and thread in one hand and a tattered old cloth in the other. She was fully veiled, save for her eyes, and in the semidark where she sat, even they could not be clearly seen, but I sensed she was watching me. I shivered, remembering the strange figure I had seen, or thought I’d seen, on the
Esperança
at the dock.
    I turned my attention back to the manuscript. What was it about those little squares that was so familiar? They looked quite out of place, as if designed to catch the reader’s attention. A code? A secret message? Frowning, I turned the page over and saw something I had missed before, words in minuscule writing inserted between border and main text. It was not Persian. It was not Greek, Latin, or any other language I knew. And yet I understood.
Find the heart,
someone had written,
for there lies wisdom. The crown is the destination.
A cold sensation passed through me, like a warning of danger. I was gripped by the disturbing feeling that this message, scrawled here by someone I didn’t know, was meant for me. It was an instruction, an order.
    I glanced up, shaking my head to clear it of such ridiculous notions. Across the library, the black-clad woman unfolded her rag of embroidery, and I saw on it, executed in rich color and with what looked like immaculate stitchery, an image of a girl dancing: a girl with rippling black hair and violet-blue eyes, just like my sister Tati. The woman gave a nod and folded her work away.
    This was crazy. I was letting my imagination get out of control. If someone was trying to send me cryptic messages about a quest or mission, they would hardly do so in Irene’s library. I drew a deep breath and turned my attention back to the manuscript. Before I went home today, I would work out what those squares in the border meant.
    I did not realize how much time had passed until I heard my hostess’s voice. She was standing by the next table, gazing at me quizzically. “Your powers of concentration are extraordinary, Paula,” she observed.
    “I’m so sorry,” I said, rising ungracefully, for my legs were badly cramped. I glanced over toward the door. Stoyan did not appear to have moved at all. His gaze was intent, watchful. “I do have a habit of getting caught up in my reading.” I was tempted to show Irene the manuscript and ask her if she could see the pattern I had been poring over without success. I hesitated. There was something strange going on here, and I could not explain it without revealing that I was familiar with matters magical and otherworldly. This was something my sisters and I did not talk about, save amongst ourselves. I picked up the leaf of paper to put it back in the box, then hesitated, looking at the fragment again. Where a few moments ago there had been small, clear writing squeezed into the narrow space between the text and the border, now there was nothing at all.
    “Is something wrong?” my hostess inquired with a little frown.
    I put the paper back in the box, slipping it partway down the pile of documents. “Nothing,” I said. “I didn’t get quite as far as I hoped this morning, that’s all. It’s a frustration common to scholars.”
    “You’re tired,” Irene said with a smile. “You’ve been working too hard.”
    I glanced around the library. A number of folk were now seated there reading or writing, unobtrusively dressed women who might perhaps have donned these plain robes or cloaks or gowns to pass through the streets to Irene’s haven without attracting too much attention. I had been too absorbed to see them come in. The black-clad person with the embroidery was gone.
    “Do tell me if you’d like any translation done,” my hostess went on. “We’ll help all we can. But now you most certainly need a rest from study. Ariadne, please tell Murat we’ll