Too Many Books

The next morning, Maeril ordered ale with breakfast.

Rishi looked at the cup, then at her.

She lifted her brows over the rim. “What?”

“It is morning.”

“Yes. I noticed. Very brave of it.”

“You ordered ale.”

“We spent months inside a library-monastery. If the gods disagree, they can file a complaint.”

She drank.

Rishi let the matter rest. The ale looked thin enough that even dawn might forgive it.

Breakfast was bread, eggs, a little cheese, and a pot of something hot. Maeril smelled it and declared it “nearly tea.” Then she tasted it.

“An insult to leaves.”

Their packs sat beside the table, half-ready for a road neither of them yet knew how to afford.

Maeril tugged one upright. It answered with a sound no travel pack should make: a sliding, internal collapse.

She froze.

Rishi set his bread down.

“Maeril.”

“It is fine.”

A scroll case rolled from beneath the flap and bumped against her boot. A wrapped book followed, then another, a bundle of ink-stained cloth, two narrow boxes, a tied packet of notes, and something small and corked that struck the floor with a threatening clink.

Rishi looked from the table to the floor, then at Maeril.

She held up one hand. “Before you say anything, this is not as bad as it looks.”

A third book slid halfway out and stopped, wedged at an angle that tipped the pack toward disaster.

Rishi reached down and set the pack upright before it could surrender entirely.

“Wizards do not travel lightly,” he said.

“We would,” Maeril answered at once, “if everyone without spellbooks stopped asking us to fix everything.”

He picked up the corked vial carefully. “Is this dangerous?”

“Only if opened by idiots.”

He set it on the table with respect.

Maeril gathered the fallen things toward herself, muttering as if every object had betrayed her.

“This,” she said, holding up a slim book, “is essential.”

Rishi nodded.

“This is also essential.”

“Of course.”

“This is not essential, strictly speaking, but abandoning it would make me an embarrassment to the arcane profession.”

“That sounds serious.”

“It is. Wizards have standards.”

She tucked the book beneath her arm and regarded the remaining heap with open hostility.

Rishi took one of the scroll cases and offered it back. “How many books are necessary?”

Maeril stared at him as if he had asked how much air a lung required.

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Whether the world intends to behave.”

“It rarely does,” she added.

He considered that, then nodded as if this were a sound excuse.

She shoved a wrapped bundle into the pack. It did not fit. She turned it, tried again, and made the problem worse.

Rishi watched her struggle for three breaths.

“May I?”

“No.”

He folded his hands on the table.

She tried again.

The pack refused.

Her tail lashed once behind the chair.

“Fine,” she said. “But do not look serene while doing it.”

“I will try.”

He removed three items, loosened the side straps, and shifted the weight. Flat books went against the back, scroll cases along the side, and wrapped boxes lower. He made a narrow pocket for the vial where it would not break against harder edges.

Maeril watched with increasing resentment.

“You have done this before.”

“I pack bandages.”

“That is not the same.”

“Both need to be found before someone bleeds.”

She opened her mouth.

Closed it.

Pointed at him. “Annoyingly fair.”

He returned the pack to her.

It stood.

Barely.

Maeril touched it with one finger, testing whether it had become a trap.

“I hate that you improved it.”

“I can make it worse again.”

“Don’t. I need the room.”

He glanced at the pile still on the floor.

Maeril followed his gaze.

“That is the problem. Wizardry is not elegant, whatever towers and portraits would like everyone to believe. It is ink, paper, copying fees, powders in packets, glass things that break, and books that become vital the moment you leave them behind.”

Rishi’s expression stayed solemn.

“Can you fix everything?”

“Usually. That is why I suffer.”

He smiled.

She caught it and brightened in victory.

“What I need,” she said, leaning closer, “is a bag that cheats.”

“A bag that cheats.”

“Yes. Space is a tyrant. Some bags have learned civil disobedience.”

He looked at the pack again.

Maeril warmed to the subject. “A bag of holding is the common dream. Big inside, small outside, and useful until someone uses it badly and makes reality angry.”

“That happens?”

“It can. Reality is touchy.”

“I see.”

“But a proper haversack—” She lifted one finger as if invoking a saint. “That is the civilized version. Compartments. Order. Your hand finds what you need. You do not spend ten minutes digging through socks and dried mushrooms while a goblin tries to bite your ankle.”

Rishi looked at the stack of books.

“And you want one.”

“I want several. I would settle for one, and I would name it.”

“You would name the bag?”

“If the bag saved my back, yes. I would honor it properly.”

He considered the phrase carefully. “How expensive is properly honored space?”

Maeril made a face.

“Painfully.”

Rishi paused. “That sounds expensive.”

“My entire path is expensive.” She tapped the nearest book. “Spells cost ink. Ink, paper, and copying cost coin. Components cost more, and the people who sell them know this and have chosen evil.”

Rishi looked down at his own travel bundle.

It was suspiciously small, morally offensive in its simplicity. Maeril looked from the bundle to his face and back again.

“What?” he asked.

“You own a staff, a spare shirt, and the ability to look meaningful in rain.”

“I also have sandals.”

“Luxury.”

“My robes were given to me.”

“Of course they were.”

Maeril leaned back, eyes narrowing. “So let me understand this. You became powerful through breath, suffering, discipline, soup, donated cloth, and being impossible.”

Rishi considered that.

“Incomplete but accurate.”

She flung both hands up. “Meanwhile, I need ink that costs more than a mule because one wrong curve and the spell sulks itself to death.”

Rishi gave his bread the grave attention of a man choosing peace.

Maeril grinned and returned to wrestling the last book into place. It still did not fit.

The book sat there with the blank patience of a thing that knew it was necessary.

Rishi said, “We will need coin.”

“We will.”

“For food. Lodging. Road costs.”

“Not only.”

“For ink.”

“Exactly.”

“For a bag that cheats?”

“Do not mock my dream,” she said, pointing at him.

He picked up the last book and turned it sideways.

Maeril watched.

He slid it into the narrow space between two scroll cases.

It fit.

She stared at the result, then at him.

“I dislike how useful you are.”

“I can stop.”

“Don’t.”

She pulled the straps tight, tied an extra cord around the middle, then sat back as if she had defeated a minor demon.

The pack stood beside the table. Maeril regarded it with the exhausted pride of someone who had won an argument against physics.

She took another drink of ale.

Rishi looked at the pack, then at his own small bundle.

“The road is going to complain,” he said.

“Then it can join the line.”

He smiled.

Maeril saw.