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A strange paralysis rendered him mute. Making decisions for himself, that was new. Moreover, he’d never been asked to choose between a selection of beverages he could not read and had never tried.

Emery gave him a quick, assessing look, then turned back to the woman taking their order. “Make that two.”

She stepped away to make the drinks, and Emery muttered, “Coffee wouldn’t have made it to our country for another few centuries after you died. I’ll warn you, most people hate it their first time.”

“Then why do you drink it at all?”

“It grows on you.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Ambrose said, keeping the suspicion from his tone. What did Emery expect in return? “Thank you.”

“It’s just coffee,” Emery said. “You’re no good to me starving.”

Ambrose’s mouth twisted with the irony. He’d never known satiety, not since the witch king’s ritual had reforged him.

He decided now was as good a time as any to ask about Morcant’s chosen subject for the class. “Is it only a coincidence that your professor is teaching the subject of my king, and you happened to have found our grave?”

Emery’s lip quirked. “You could say the lessons served to inspire me to revisit your grave, but the timing is less coincidental than you think.” He took two paper cups set on the counter for them. “Morcant has always been fascinated by the witch king. One might even call it an unhealthy obsession.”

Ambrose chose not to divulge that he and Morcant had that in common, though he’d actually known the witch king. Intimately.

He accepted the paper cup Emery handed him, warmth seeping through his gloves. There was something comforting about the sensation, the smell.

“Come,” Emery said. “We have time before my class to look through the books at the library.”

If Ambrose had thought the number of books in Emery’s home was impressive, nothing could prepare him for Bellgrave’s library.

Emery hardly blinked as he tapped a small thick paper he called a “card” on something that let them through a barrier into a room several stories tall, every wall and gallery lined with books.

Spines and spines of them patterned the walls like scale mail.

Ambrose considered himself dauntless, but the labyrinth of shelves towering above was quite daunting. Even if he could learn to read, what hope had he of finding what he required in this colossal hoard?

Emery had no such difficulties. He navigated the maze like a hound on familiar hunting grounds. The fine bones of his hands flexed as they hovered over spines, freeing one volume after another and adding it to a pile.

While Emery collected anything he deemed relevant, Ambrose took his first sip of coffee. His brow furrowed. The brew tasted bitterly of nothing he’d ever tried, yet somehow evoked a feeling. An emotion. One Ambrose found more undefinable than the flavor.

Something like serenity, but less lonely. Like a full belly of roasted supper, like sanctuary from a long winter.

Wishful things. The sort Ambrose could only hope to taste temporarily.

“I take it you like it,” Emery said.

Ambrose took another sip in answer.

As they prepared to check out, Ambrose spotted a familiar figure at a table, head bent over a device open to a page of text.

The blind student.

As Ambrose tried to invent an excuse to walk over and demand answers, the student stood, packed his things, and used his stick to navigate toward a door with a symbol Ambrose inferred was for the men’s lavatory.

“I need to relieve myself.”

Emery glanced over his shoulder. “Do the distance limits on your little pact require me to closely supervise?”

“The magic allows me to go two furlongs from your side.”

“Then I’ll wait here.”

Ambrose ducked through the door. He had a moment of panic upon seeing several men with their backs to him, hovering next to privies mounted into the wall at a height for making water while standing.

A privilege Ambrose’s equipment wouldn’t permit him, and which gave him a very real moment of panic before remembering he wasn’t actually here to relieve himself.

The student he was after was washing his hands. Ambrose, prone to following instinct over composing a plan, walked straight up to him and said, “I saw that you can read. Can you tell me how?”

The boy’s face flushed red with incredulity. “E-excuse me?”

“In the lecture hall and in the library,” Ambrose clarified. “I’ve seen you using machines to read. If you please, explain it to me.”

“Here? Are you serious?”

“Yes?”

Behind them, students finished up in a hurry and started to leave. Ambrose frowned. It seemed he’d miscalculated, and a public privy was considered a poor place for conversation.

“Just find a tutorial on the internet,” the boy said.

He started to brush past Ambrose.

The witch king’s voice came bristling in his ear. You deserve better than such disrespect. Don’t let this chance slip past us.

Ambrose hated resorting to force, but he didn’t see an alternative. He grabbed the boy by the scruff of his shirt and shoved him against the wall.

“Hey! What are you—Don’t touch me!”

Ambrose didn’t use the power, though he felt its craving like the sizzle of frying goose fat in an iron pan. He pressed a thumb to the sensitive knot in the boy’s throat. “Answer my question.”

“It’s an e-reader?!” The boy choked, and Ambrose loosened his grip. “I use text-to-speech so it reads my textbooks out loud to me on my ear buds.” He gestured to the black things in his ears.

“Show me.”

With shaking fingers, the boy pawed searchingly through his bag for the “e-reader.” The order in which he did things and the commands he gave it were complicated, but Ambrose had spent years memorizing the witch king’s commands and executing them flawlessly.

He ordered the boy to repeat the process only once and committed everything to memory.

“That’s it. Will you let me go now? That hurts.”

Ambrose released him, a specter of chagrin haunting him for a moment.

Once, he’d never have been the man to threaten an innocent person, but the thought perished quickly.

The witch king’s return would require every meager tool Ambrose had at his disposal.

He’d asked politely, and when that failed, used the method which bore results.

He’d never get anywhere without baring his teeth. This world and his had that in common.

“Tell anybody about this and I’ll hunt your family for seven generations,” he said, then departed.