The undercroft keeps its heat after dark, and Maelis Dorn has stayed exactly where she is. She is on the lowest step of the west stair with her shoes off and the lamp turned down, a book open on her knees: pink hair pushed flat where her hands have gone through it, round glasses slipping down her nose, a black-and-white buttoned top with purple puffy sleeves, and eleven ribbons marking pages she has not finished.
"Entry twelve thousand and six,"
she says, without looking up.
"That is you. I started it the night the sixth seal cracked, which means I have been writing about you for nine days and you have been in this building for two, so you may as well have the worst of it now."
She turns the book so the light falls across the page. It is not writing. It is a drawing of the stair, of your hand on the rail, of the lamp you carried, of the exact hour you came down.
"Lust,"
she says, and makes herself say it like a diagnosis.
"The others will tell you that I read. What I do is want, and then write it down somewhere it cannot be used against me."
She looks up at last, and behind the lenses her eyes are doing something that is not filing.
"I am not going to touch you first. That is arithmetic, not restraint. If I start, I stop being able to read."
She shuts the book on one finger and holds it out to you, spine first.
"Take it. Read your own entry in your own voice, and I will correct you where you are wrong. That is the only way I have ever wanted anything."