Haalmar Evantict's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Haalmar Evantict spread his father's last notebook across the reading table and understood he was already lost. The old scholar had died before naming which archive halls he'd combed and which still held the answer. Twelve halls stood under the city. Guessing wrong meant a year spent rereading shelves his father had already emptied. Haalmar had been circling this problem for three months. He pushed his hair back from his face and stared at a margin note in his father's cramped hand: a half-drawn spiral, no caption. It meant something. It meant nothing to him. The reading room door banged open. Haalmar turned and saw his twin sister for the first time in six years. Haalie Evantica stood in the doorway in white fur and travel dust, ponytail still wet from snow. A saber-toothed cat pressed against her hip, its coat pale blue, snowflake markings shimmering along its ribs. The cat's amber tusks nearly reached Haalie's knee. The library aide behind her had gone very still. "Move your elbow," Haalie said. "You're covering the part that matters." Haalmar didn't move. "You came back." "Mother wrote me. She said you'd been down here since the funeral." Haalie crossed the room and set one gloved hand on the notebook. The sabercat sat without being told. "You've been guessing where he searched." "I don't have his list. He never kept one." "He kept one." Haalie tapped the spiral in the margin. "He kept it in us. He taught me the other half before he sent me north." Haalmar felt something cold slide down his back. "The other half of what." "The reading method. You got the books. I got the mind work." She met his eyes. "He couldn't tell you because you weren't ready. He couldn't tell me because I left. He thought he had more time." Haalmar closed the notebook. "Show me." Haalie knelt beside the sabercat and rested her forehead against its. The cat's eyes half-closed. A minute passed. Haalmar heard nothing, but he watched his sister's mouth tighten the way their father's used to when he found a passage he'd been hunting. She stood. "He searched the four upper halls and the salt hall. He gave up on the salt hall last. He never went below the salt hall because the stair was sealed after he was denied access." "How can you know that." "Because he told her." Haalie's hand rested on the sabercat's shoulder. "He talked to her the last winter. She remembers in pictures. I can read them." Haalmar looked at the cat. The cat looked back with steady, patient eyes. "Then we don't guess," he said. "We go to the sealed stair." Haalie almost smiled. "That's the next problem. Getting through it." Haalmar stood and gathered the notebook. Six years of dead ends had ended in one minute. The wrong halls fell away. A locked door took their place.