He had not shared a bed with another person for a very long time, longer than he could remember, really. He knew he had done so in the past, sometimes in search of comfort and other times merely out of necessity, but large sections of his past often smeared together in long streaks of indistinct anxiety and dread. But if any concerns about propriety troubled the young lady, they were certainly not on display. Whenever it was time to sleep, she simply changed into her pajamas (in an engaging show of lights and sound effects), crawled into the bed, wished him sweet dreams, put out the light, and was asleep and quietly snoring within what felt like seconds.
(When she didn’t read until the early hours of the morning. Even then, she was conscientious, and promptly turned out the overhead light and read by a small directional light she kept on her nightstand.)
He found himself easily carried along by the unique rhythm of her days. He spent most of his time in a state akin to slack-jawed wonder, either at her astonishing behavior or the inescapable strangeness of the situation.
He had no earthly idea where they might be. It was one of the reasons he was still in debate about whether or not he was alive or dead.
This place was idyllic.
It was picturesque.
It was a paradise, a garden where deities might have walked.
(And he felt qualified to make this judgment because he had had multiple dealings with multiple deities.)
The house was beautiful. Every corner of every room was beautiful and welcoming, with intricate details that might have been easily overlooked if he had not had so much time to study them. Everything in the place, every stick of furniture, every cushion, even the walls themselves, it all looked as if it had been constructed by a master craftsman to exacting specifications.
It was astonishing, really, and he had spent a not inconsiderable amount of his life in palaces and other abodes of kings. Although this place was generally less ostentatious, less overtly gorgeous, it was certainly on par with any palace he had yet seen (and it surpassed many).
And this was completely ignoring all of the alchemic devices that were tucked away into every corner and integrated seamlessly into the house. Every single room had alchemic lights, most controlled by switches on the wall for convenience. He had not discovered any external power source for any of them. Wherever that source was, it was neatly hidden away someplace in the house.
(He had a vague feeling that their source of power was the house itself, but that was not something he could prove. It was simply a gut instinct.)
There were five indoor bathrooms in the house. Five. There was only a single bed, but five bathrooms. This was one of the elements of the house that felt absolutely deranged, as if it might be part of a cosmic practical joke. Each bathroom had shocking amenities. There was hot water on command from every faucet; the toilets became warm when one sat upon them. They whisked all waste away before it could be smelled, and then there was a refreshing spout of clear water that cleaned the behind.
That alone was surely a mechanical wonder worthy of a palace.
There were also little spots on the walls where cables could be connected to draw up power. This allowed items in the house that required power to be easily rearranged. The young lady called them “outlets.”
In addition to these astonishing wonders, and others that were readily on display in the kitchen, there was a library in this house.
Home libraries were not that uncommon in the houses of the nobility. The printing press had made books more readily available since they no longer had to be copied painstakingly by hand. Even some commoners had small libraries of their own. Prystir had mandatory education for children, and due to this, the literacy rate of the kingdom was much higher than it was globally.
But this library—it was something else.
As beautiful as the country house was, it was largely devoid of furniture, rather like a place newly constructed or recently inhabited. But the room that the girl called the library was practically overflowing. The room was dominated by enormous shelves made of dark hardwood. They were floor to the high ceilings, with broad, deep shelves, and they were absolutely stuffed to the gills with books.
There were even stacks of books in the corners around the shelves, some on the rolling library ladder, or piled on the secretary desk.
The room did not have much in the way of furnishings apart from the shelves and desk, but the books housed in it were beyond astonishing. It was a collection worthy of the most aristocratic of bibliophiles. And it wasn’t simply the number of books, but also their make and condition. They were all beautiful, and beautifully maintained.
And then there were the titles. There were fascinating and intriguing titles on the shelf that begged investigation, titles that he had never seen in any other place.
The young lady was generous and unguarded with her books, and suggested that he read to help pass the time as he convalesced.
Unfortunately, when he attempted to pull a book from the shelf to read it, he encountered a system error.
You have not been authorized to access books from this library.
Well, that was curious.
That was beyond curious. It was absolutely suspicious.
This outcome surprised the young lady and left her quite embarrassed. She was very apologetic but seemed to be unable to alter the permissions to allow him to take any of the books from the shelf.
This remained true for almost all of the other books scattered around the house, which had presumably originated from the library. It was particularly true of what appeared to be a long series of interconnected illustrated novels that alarmingly featured one of his most common epithets, the Shadowstep Alchemist.
Strangely enough, these particular books had unique rejection messages when he attempted to open them.
You’re not allowed to read these!!!
As if to make up for what she clearly perceived as a terrible personal failing with regard to his permissions related to the books in the library, the young lady rounded up a number of unusual books and arranged them on a small shelf in the bedroom, near his side of the bed. Unlike most of the books in the house, these had no protections and he could read them freely. It was a strange collection, and many of them were heavily illustrated. It was sometimes difficult for him to immediately follow their stories, since based on the numbers on their spines they mostly seemed to be individual volumes from the middle of unrelated series. Still, he was glad of something to read, particularly in the early days when he had not much been able to get out of bed.