Krow countered. “When was this?”

“What?”

“This theft that occurred. What hour and what minute precisely? Was it recent? Today, this morning? Was it last night? Was it yesterday?”

The vargvir wavered for a second, but firmed. “Still trying to talk your way out? You draculkar have amazing reason – all you do is talk.”

“And yet, not a single one of the pertinent questions have been answered. Isn’t that what researchers do – answer questions?”

The vargvir’s face reddened, his eyes bulged in outrage. “Who do you think you are!?”

A librarian intervened. “Let us not let hot heads prevail over reason. Master enchanter, will you tell us what you saw?”

Yes, tell what you saw so Krow could once and for all shove the silent Reeve at his side as an alibi.

“I saw this masked snake-born worm in the Circle Hall!”

Gasps sounded.

Krow lifted a brow. The what now? 

The vargvir nodded, indignant and smug at the same time. “He’s taken the Book of Maron!”

With the outcry that burst out at that statement, the book was that greatly important?

Krow waited patiently for the majority of the noise to die down. 

In a lull between the loud gossiping, he dropped a question.

“What is this Book of Maron?”

Another commotion sounded.

Oy, they were in a library, you know…

“You dare play the innocent?!”

Krow pressed his lips together. That was becoming irritating. How long was the bastard going to spit proofless accusations like it was a contest, instead of answering his questions?

He grit his teeth, forced his jaw to relax and calmly returned fire with another question.

“When did this Book disappear?”

He saw the librarians looking at each other in alarm. They didn’t know either?

Krow eyed the accusing vargvir more carefully.

There was sweat on the other’s brow. The hands, meticulously pared claws gleaming with some sort of polish, kept compulsively tightening his grip on his cane. And most damning, his eyes kept darting every now and then to the exit.

It was a scam.

Well, obviously Krow knew the thief wasn’t him. Could prove it, even. But he thought the vargvir had a case of mistaken identity, not that the other had deliberately chosen to target him.

The accuser snorted at Krow’s question. “You likely still have it on you!”

Again, a question unanswered.

His lips twisted, letting a hint of the irritation he felt on his face.

Before he could speak though, Marses lost his patience as well. “The person you are accusing is a guest of the Primar.”

Krow didn’t begrudge the Reeve the decision to stay silent until now. It wasn’t the Reeve’s job to defend him, after all. 

But what a relief. This sudden drama that came out of nowhere could finally end.

The other party didn’t agree.

“A likely story,” the vargvir yelled, jabbing his cane disdainfully at Krow. “You blackguard, to even suborn a Reeve?!”

Unlike earlier instances of noisy reaction, the crowd suddenly fell quiet, only hushed voices apparent.

Uh?

Krow stilled, alert.

But then he realized from hearing snippets of quickly scandalously whispered conversation, it was the accusing vargvir who had said something he shouldn’t have and shocked the hall to silence.

The vargvir seemed to know what he’d done, because he rapidly paled. He opened his mouth.

He didn’t get the chance to speak.

“The enmity between our races is ancient. Twisted with glory and vengeance, blood and grudges, a constant litany of mutual pain.” Marses’s voice was quiet, yet it rang in the growing hush. It carried to others at further tables, who lifted their heads at the attention-grabbing cadence of the Reeve’s words.

“And yet, for the peace to be gained, for the children to grow up unafraid of death and loss, the leaders of our two nations have come together, again and again since ancient times. It has been a hundred years without outright war between our peoples, and that is the glory and honor of vargvir and draculkar both. A hundred years without war, and that is why I know you have not held weapons against the draculkar. Nor have your parents. Nor have your children, your siblings, your niblings. A hundred years without war, and that is why I know you have not breathed the blood of the woodland. You have not taken the blades of those who have fallen at your side and held them, even in your teeth, to quell the howling of your comrades’ lingering spirits. A hundred years without war, and that is why I know that it is not the raging grief of old battle that has caused you to lose yourself.”

Marses stared the other vargvir down. “To have so little control over one’s wolfblood that you insult your own people – is this Kombar’s pride, the honor we hold in ourselves?”

The silence lingered on the question, and even those newly entering the hall were taken into the hush.

A long silence, in which the other vargvir opened and closed his mouth, like a fish taken out of water. He caught himself, and his lips trembled once as his eyes sparked a glare.

“You brutes raised on blood and fed the glories of obsolete war, dare talk of civilized conduct and peace? You know nothing.” He turned on his heel and made for the main library doors, head held high.

Well.

Obviously he hadn’t been listening.

“How did you know the Book was gone?” Krow ripped the silence in half. He lifted his hands at the looks from all around. “He never said. Just curious.”

The vargvir was still, a rigid figure, half turning back toward them.

Marses frowned, shifted.

The accusing vargvir broke into a sprint.

Before anyone could even exclaim in surprise, Marses shot past, pursuing.

Krow closed his mouth on the next question he’d been about to ask, now going unvoiced. It wasn’t like any of his questions were answered anyway.

He stayed silent for a moment, listening. The flamboyant accuser was being pilloried in public opinion.

You’d think someone from a race like the vargvir would know better than to run.

Apparently there were idiots everywhere.

He side-eyed the librarians, who were having a semi-intense conversation. One of them growled, and the other threw up her hands. 

“So again,” he caught their attention. “What is the Book of Maron?”