The Scrollrunners

Chapter 1 | Talibah of Alexandria

She crept barefoot between the tall, dusty rows of shelves, tightly clutching a dozen or so papyrus scrolls to her chest as she placed each foot carefully on the stone floor, avoiding the ones she knew were loose from memory. She could hear the murmurs of scholars and students meandering through the other rows and hoped her own presence would continue to go unnoticed.

A loud laugh sounded from somewhere among the shelves quickly followed by several hushing sounds, startling her enough that she looked in the direction of the commotion instead of where she was going. As she was turning the corner she ran smack into the last person she wanted to see— and the last person who wanted to see her. (Hey, not everyone could adore her.)

She cringed and slowly looked up into the sneering face of Asdis, one of the older scholars whose wrong side she had gotten on one too many times— okay, two too many times now.

Great, thought Talibah. There's no charming my way out of this one. He's always had it out for me.

With a pang, she thought of her mother, Akila, who had also never gotten along with Asdis. Some of her final memories of her mother were fraught with tension, fear, and anger, a lot of this directed at Asdis and others like him. Talibah could vaguely remember a scary moment when her mother and Asdis were caught up in a yelling match after he had said something to Talibah that at the time she didn't understand. Akila had been dragged away by Aristarchus, Talibah's father, and another scholar, Max, before things escalated too much in front of an accumulating crowd of looming men in scholar's robes. Talibah had followed closely behind her unwillingly retreating mother, uncertain and frightened at the hatred she saw in her mother's eyes.

Ignoring the painful memory, Talibah stared defiantly up at him despite knowing she was caught. Asdis, with his foreboding eyebrows, lank hair, and long, crooked nose, glared back at her with a pompous curl of his lip.

"Talibah, how surprised I am to find you lurking," Asdis mocked. "And here I thought you had mended your disobedient ways. You know better than I do that females are not allowed in this chamber."

She bristled at the way he said that, as if girls and women were worse than the lowest of the black market merchants who dealt in stolen scrolls, jewels, silks, and other valuables. Well, maybe that wasn't too far from the truth; though Talibah only borrowed scrolls, it wasn't technically stealing— she always returned them good as new (or close enough to it).

His eyes trailed down to the scrolls she was discreetly trying to slip behind her back, "And what have we here?"

Asdis quickly snatched the scrolls from her, causing some to fall to the ground. He hastily bent over to pick them up as she gingerly backed away. As he stood up and opened his mouth as if to tell her off even more, she turned on her heel and sprinted away, dodging between rows of shelves and ducking underneath the outstretched arms of studious men holding their scrolls up towards the light to better read their forbidden contents.

Loud shouts sounded from behind her as she burst through the doors and started running through the twisting halls of the great Library of Alexandria. She could hear the pounding of several feet following her echoing off the stone archways and walls, but they'd never catch her. She was making her way to the back entrance the servants used, a place in which neither Asdis nor his many cronies would be caught dead.

Just as she reached the kitchens, she heard Asdis' bitter voice command, "Athena, get Talibah!" followed by several indignant meows.

She smirked and laughed aloud; Athena, the jungle cat who lived in the Library and loved her, would never listen to Asdis. Curses of frustration resounded from the passageways behind her as she heard Athena's playful hissing, refusing to follow old Asdis' orders.