Chương 6: Plan or Punishment.

The idea began with a punishment. Lira wasn't the one being punished, but she was watching when it happened. Maren, a pretty blonde maid with a habit of lining her eyes in dark kohl that made her green eyes seem larger than they were, had been caught doing something unforgivable. She had helped someone. The new footman in training had been struggling to read an order note, his lips moving silently over the words, his brow furrowed in frustration.

Maren had leaned in and read it aloud for him, quick and quiet, as if it were nothing. To anyone else, it would have been nothing. To Hesta, it was a crime of utmost gravity.

"Oh, so you're also clever now?" Hesta had said, her voice sharp enough to peel paint.

"Reading for others? Acting important?" Maren froze, her hands stilling at her sides.

"If you like reading so much," Hesta continued, lips curling, "why don't you go read to the dust spirits in the old library?" The corridor had gone quiet. No one spoke for Maren. No one ever did. Lira watched as the other maids lowered their eyes and how they shifted just enough to create distance between them and the irate woman. That, Lira decided, was the true source of Hesta's power. Fear. She was a petty woman with just enough power to hurt people, and she used it with precision.

She targeted the ones who stood out: The pretty ones, the clever ones, and the kind ones. Anyone who might be noticed for any reason. And when she needed a weapon, she used the Old library. The Library was where maids were sent to disappear. That is a bit dramatic. The space was not sealed or forbidden; it was not dangerous or forbidden; it was just full of pointless work. Cold, drafty, and far too large for a single person to manage, the space resisted every effort to tame it.

The shelves were packed tight with paper and leather, too delicate for water use, too valuable, completely discarded, and yet not important enough to genuinely care for them. Dust lay over everything like a second skin. You could clean a shelf carefully, only to return the next day and find it buried again in dust. The warped windows let in thin streams of wind that stirred the dust endlessly, undoing hours of work in a single night. And Hesta would check.

Every evening, her boots would echo against the stone as she walked the aisles, not to inspect the work, but to make sure the girl assigned there was suffering. The next morning, the dust would return. The work would begin anew. No one envied Maren for her assignment. They just pitied her. The idea came quietly. Lira did not react to it at first. She let it settle, turning it over in her mind the way her father once examined unfamiliar words.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. A lot of maids had preferred duties. If they proved useful, reliable, or simply unproblematic, the higher staff often left them alone. Not out of kindness, but convenience. A known quantity was easier to ignore. The old woman in the supply tower came to mind. She had become part of the room itself, unseen and unquestioned. Always arranging supplies in neat order. No one questioned her or bothered her because she was always there.

If Lira could secure something similar… The Old Library. She could disappear. Out of sight and out of mind. And unlike the others, she would not be useless there. Lira was a scribe's daughter. She knew how to handle paper, how to move it, sort it, and preserve it. Where others saw endless, meaningless labor, she saw a home away from home. More importantly, she saw information. Harwin and Dalwin started using the library as a dumping ground. Anything that was no longer immediately useful found its way there.

Financial reports, outdated records, receipts, and correspondence that had lost their urgency. Nothing truly valuable enough to protect, and nothing truly worthless enough to destroy. Perfect information to send Pallan's way, So she started gathering information. She listened. In the kitchens, she overheard Brenneth complaining to Old Marga that Maren had cried after her first day in the library. Her hands had gone red from the cold, and her lips cracked from the dry air.

"There's no fireplace in that cursed place," Old Marga muttered, kneading dough with more force than necessary."It used to be heated with magic once the former dowager queen was alive."

"Windows don't close right either," added Brenneth.

"Wind cuts straight through you." From Tessa, Lira learned that Celene rarely kept a maid in the library for more than a few days. She wasn't sure if it was out of mercy or practicality. But once they started to complain to her, begging for anything else, even chamber pot duty, Celene, who valued order and appearance, would reassign them. After all, a maid who looked like she had been dragged through a storm did not belong near the noble quarters. Again and again. The position never stuck.

That made it even more valuable to Lira. The history of the place came in fragments. A former queen, the grandmother of the current king, had built it as a retreat. When her son took the throne, she withdrew from court, choosing to distance herself and let her son's new wife rule without interference. A tower had been raised for her, filled with books gathered over a lifetime. After her death, most of her collection was stripped bare.

Important nobles claimed the rarest volumes, displaying them in their own libraries as symbols of taste and wealth, and the court wizard, as well as the mage guild, claimed the magical tomes. What remained was what no one wanted, or what no one had bothered to look through carefully. The current Queen Dowager never visited. The ruling queen had no interest in it either. The tower had been forgotten. Left to gather dust. So Lira waited. She worked when she had to. She watched when she didn't. She kept her head down.

She took orders without question. She made no effort to stand out. And she waited for the right kind of attention. It came, as most things did, through Hesta. The woman was shrieking somewhere down the corridor, her voice carrying long before she appeared. Lira did not turn toward it. Instead, she stepped closer to the bulletin board outside Harwin's office. It was a simple thing. A collection of notices, assignments, and small pieces of information that most maids ignored. Lira did not ignore it.

But most of the time, she would check it when no one was looking. No, this time, she stood there, still and quiet, reading carefully. She had already formed a theory. Hesta could not read. Or if she could, she did so poorly enough to resent it. It explained too much. The way she targeted girls who showed even a hint of education. The way she snapped at Lira on her first day, cutting her off before she could present her letter. It had been irritating to be reminded of her inadequacies.

So Lira read, in the open, visibly enough to be seen doing it. The reaction was immediate.

"What are you doing?" Hesta's voice cracked down the corridor like a whip. Lira flinched, stepping back from the board as if caught doing something shameful.

"I was just…" she began, lowering her head.

"Reading?" Hesta finished, her tone dripping with contempt.

"Another clever one." Lira said nothing. She let the silence work. The decision came quickly.

"Since you like it so much," Hesta said, her lips pulling into a thin smile, "you can spend your time in the old library. Maybe the books there will talk back to you." A few nearby maids winced. Lira just bowed her head.

"Yes, Headmaid." With no argument, no hesitation, and a complete submission She did not smile as she walked away. She kept her expression carefully neutral, her posture just slightly slumped, as if bracing for something unpleasant. Inside, her thoughts were already moving. The library was cold. It was miserable. It was endless. And it was now hers. If she could keep it. Since entering the castle, Lira had not been pushed into a role. She had chosen one. And that made all the difference.