Free Blood of the Redd Guard - Part One by Dan Decker Page A

She looked at the ceiling, expecting to see growths of mold on the wood but wasn’t able to make out anything because she’d let Kyson get too far ahead. It could be the books . Spending the next several hours in the archives began to be less appealing and she considered making up an excuse to get out of it but realized it was already too late for that. If she would have had a valid excuse, it would have been the first thing she’d said to Kyson when he opened the door.
    Taking a shallow breath through her mouth to avoid the smell, Nelion sped up her pace and found that they were now in a much larger chamber with rows of shelves on either side, leaving a tight walkway. She caught glimpses of the contents of these shelves as they passed, but noticed that most of them didn’t contain books or scrolls. She saw a number of swords, helmets, and other body armor when she took a moment to examine one shelf before hurrying after Kyson. The weaponry and armor were quite old but looked well taken care of.
    She would have to come back here in daylight to peruse the items of interest. They must have some significance to be put on display like this. She wondered if hidden among the ancient antiquities she might find proof of the Hunwei’s existence.
    They came to a stairway and with a final look around the room, trying to pierce in a glance the secrets that were centuries old, she followed Kyson up to the second floor. This floor was closer to what she’d been expecting and she was happy to note that the moldy smell stayed downstairs.
    As with the first floor, it was covered with bookshelves, but instead of interesting items, there were only books. They found Semal in a far corner of the room among a row of the bookshelves sitting on a chair. Nelion had noticed several other such chairs surrounding a table at the center of the room and she assumed that he had grabbed it from there.
    A pile of books had been stacked high enough to support a bright lantern and Semal sat beside it with an open ledger on his lap and several books littered around his feet. He scanned the pages, running his finger down one of the columns, before skipping on to the next page. He didn’t see them approach and Kyson had to clear his throat a couple of times to get his attention.
    When Semal looked up, Nelion noticed that his eyes were red. He blinked several times as he focused on them.
    “Ah, here you are at last.” Semal smiled. “Kyson was about to start bashing my head in with the ledgers, I’m glad somebody is here to keep him sane.” That was one thing that could be said about the man, even though he didn’t have a problem giving Nelion more work to do in a day than a normal person could do in a week, he was kind and had good humor about it. It was his unassuming gentle manner combined with his high expectations that made her stay on task while she worked for him, even when plowing through boring documents. “I thought he must have been imagining something when he said that he could hear knocking. I fear my hearing is going quicker than I thought.” Despite his haggard appearance and self-deprecation, Semal couldn’t have been older than sixty and still moved with ease.
    “If you weren’t so old,” Kyson said, “we wouldn’t be able to benefit from your ancient wisdom.”
    “A life unplanned will go nowhere.” Semal smiled again. “All joking aside, old age hasn’t brought half as much as I expected, though my stiff joints are worse than I’d planned on. Are you ready to work?” When Nelion nodded, he continued. “We’re going through these looking for irregularities.” He stopped as if that was all the explanation that was needed and didn’t say anything more as he handed Nelion a ledger.
    “Um,” Nelion said as she noticed a smile on Kyson’s face as he shrugged as if to say that he had told her so. “Irregularities? I thought we had more to go on than that.” She’d thought that Kyson had given her the highlights of