It was built as an extension to her manor. The shape was octagonal and, to get from one side to its opposite, took a good dozen strides or so—depending on exactly how long a person’s stride was. A rge room that would not be out of pce as a lounge or dining room, albeit too small to be called a hall.

  If there was one pce it was cking, though, it was not an overly tall room; not that she knew of any man who could not stand tall inside it, just that tall men would certainly come close and many could easily touch the ceiling. Towards the centre, it did rise a little higher, albeit not enough to be significant.

  However, that centre did have its own charm, which was that the ceiling gave way to clear gss. That gss section continued the roof’s shape to a point with an iron scaffold to hold the individual pieces of gss, the transition from ceiling to gss supported by brick arches.

  The walls, too, were made of brick and mortar, the floor concrete. She had hoped that the walls could have been concrete too, yet her experts still cked the experience to guarantee success. At the least, the mortar, made with the right materials, promised to withstand the trials of time.

  Of course, those building materials were merely the room’s outline. The decoration for the room naturally followed the bookcases. Those eight ft walls were covered from floor to ceiling in rows of shelves for books, but broken up by tall, narrow windows for light. With light also falling from the ceiling’s centre, it did end up a rather bright room when sun graced the world.

  The floor, then, was made of rge, ceramic tiles, each brightly coloured and smooth. There was not a particur pattern to them, rather that the room was split into eight triangur slices, each with its own associated colour, made up of triangle-shaped tiles. These tiles approached the bookshelves, yet left a slight gap, and they did not meet up in the room’s centre.

  That central space beneath the gss was bare concrete atop which sat a bench, uniquely made of iron with wooden boards to sit on, and two tubs from which sprouted small flowering shrubs. A cramped space, the bench even more unusual in how it curved to fit in the small area, but which certainly gave a contrast.

  Otherwise, the room was empty—if not for the guests she had invited at this time.

  “If one takes the space of this room, then it is precisely a tenth of the scale of the final building. Unfortunately, I needed to compromise with the height, which is instead about a seventh. The other compromise is that this interior would be made up of three floors; however, the centre would still be hollow, as it were, to let light shine down onto an indoor garden. Of course, the rest of the space would also feature many, many more bookcases than I have here, as well as pces for people to sit and write and discuss.”

  The thirteen present constituted merely part of the coalition she sought to fund the initial stages of the project—not the first she had shown this room, nor the st. However, they were present now, in part due to convenience of schedule, in part due to her careful navigation of a complex mesh of considerations.

  That it was no coincidence she had invited Lady Bavaria on this same day as the cousin of Grand Duke Charles, that she had pulled forward Lord Schwanstein’s visit to the prior day under the guise of meeting the architect, that to those with more money than nobility she had always made sure to give a week rather than a specific day.

  “A tenth the scale… if Lady Augstadt could afford to build this, is there really a need for us to contribute?”

  The one who asked that was not the Grand Duke’s cousin, but the husband of that cousin. By convention, the cousin held no title, that her father, while a count with baron titles spare, could only “lend” those to sons, even though he only had two daughters. Still, convention or otherwise, she had been known as Lady Weiz since her age of majority; her husband had his own title, but tended to be called Lord Weiz as no one particurly liked him and merely put up with his presence for the sake of his wife.

  His question spoke to why no one particurly liked him.

  Still, she regarded him with a warm smile. “I appreciate the confidence Lord Weiz has in my finances. Certainly, I afforded this easily, and I could easily afford ten more. If given a year, I am certain I could even begin building a hundred of these. However, the scope of this project is a thousand times rger than this, and the funds it truly requires go beyond the building. Not that the building itself would simply be a thousand times the cost of this either.”

  Although he went to speak again—truly someone who needed no time to think over what was said—his wife squeezed his hand and interceded. “My Lady brings up something intriguing, is it to make us curious? What about the building itself would make it more costly than the sum of its parts?”

  “My thanks to Lord Weiz for bringing this up,” she said with a nod to him, nothing in her tone at all insincere, then she turned to his wife. “Lady Weiz, it is like this. Consider the centrepiece”—she gestured up at the middle of the ceiling where the gss took over—“one can see there is metalwork there. At this scale, iron is trivial to work with. However, for something ten times rger, one could entertain that some difficulties would be posed. That is, that iron frame would be the size of this entire room and would need to be hoisted to a lofty height.”

  At that st statement, a few of the guests looked up at the gss, then down at the rest of the room.

  “Indeed, that is a difficulty,” Lady Weiz said with one hand on her cheek, her other hand holding her elbow.

  “Lady Augstadt spoke of three floors, yes?”

  She turned to face Lady Bavaria—Dorothy—and bowed her head in agreement. “I did.”

  Dorothy’s mouth made a thin line and, with a gesture as she did, she turned to one side, then the other. “What hope has My Lady of filling such an extravagant building when she has yet to fill something a thousandth the size?”

  “That is rather pressing, is it not?” she said, ending with a titter as she covered her mouth. “As I touched on, the funds I am looking to raise go beyond the cost of construction.”

  “So My Lady would spend thousands, no, tens of thousands on books?” Dorothy asked, making no attempt to conceal the doubt in her tone.

  She shook her head. “I intend for the library to hold what would be, in essence, the right to copy books. That is, we would pay these authors so that the library may then print copies of their work to put on the shelves. There are then many other works by authors of the past, for which we need only acquire one copy in good condition to make copies of our own.”

  “Thus these funds would also go towards a printing press?” Dorothy said, her tone warmer.

  She brought her hands together, then opened them. “There is a printing press already in the city that the library would use to begin with. However, yes, I would want for the library to have one of its own.”

  Lord Schiltberg, a man with a quiet demeanour, cleared his throat, then asked, “What has the Church said of this?”

  She tilted her head. “Nothing that I know of,” she said, a small smile pying on her lips.

  He stood up that little straighter. “I find that hard to believe if they know My Lady would be printing all sorts of books,” he said, and she heard in his tone, not chiding, but something more subtle.

  Because he, too, had his pce here.

  “Me? No books would be printed on my behalf,” she said, her voice a touch lighter than before, only to then settle deeper. “The library would be part of the academies and, as such, shall governed by the charter I have already granted.”

  He crossed his arms, a thin smile.

  “My Lady makes it sound as if she is in opposition to the Church,” Lady Weiz said and she said it with no uncertainty, despite how serious an allegation it was. No, precisely because of how serious an accusation, it could not be said lightly.

  “I appreciate the Church’s guidance in many matters. However, it is only guidance. The King has but one w regarding the printing of books and it is that the Bible may only be printed in Latin. If the Church is dissatisfied by this, then they make take up the issue with him, or they may take up the matter with the academies’ council.”

  There was no heat in her voice, yet, in the pause that followed, none spoke up.

  “Regardless, I do mean that the library shall be under the academies. One must understand the academies exist to provide, in no uncertain terms, the best education. To do that, one must attract the best teachers and tutors. I see no reason why anyone else need interfere with parents arranging their children’s education.”

  “There is arranging a child’s education, and there is asking for a donation which could already hire the finest tutors ten times over.”

  She turned to this new speaker with a smile. Dame Katherine, a most curious woman. Her husband had been a minor noble—as most aspiring knights were—in service to the King. However, an injury in his days as a squire had cut short his aspirations. Still a spry man and one well trained, he had gone on to instruct many other squires, which took him all over the country and that included to her father’s household where they had met.

  For her to be a dame, there was necessarily a greater tragedy still to happen. After a decade without a child between them, he lost his life when rescuing a squire from a mad horse, and in the weeks following that she found out she was finally with child. His contribution to the training of many knights was not for nothing, that the King had offered her a pension and a small piece of nd.

  However, she instead bid him to wait, that if she had a daughter, she would happily accept; that if she had a son, all she would ask is that he may grow up to be a knight. So impressed was the King that, when her son was born, he had her knighted, ensuring her son would be eligible to be a knight in turn. Which had all happened long ago, her son now indeed a knight with two sons of his own, who were both squires in the King’s employ, as well as three daughters.

  Yes, she regarded Dame Katherine with a smile. “Pray allow me a moment, that there are two particur points brought up, each which I would address in turn.

  “The first is the matter of donation. Indeed, I would be grateful for any and all donations. My request, though, is not a donation. I have opened a bank to oversee the city’s accounts, a bank which will—separately—oversee the accounts for the academies and it will offer bonds. If one is unfamiliar with bonds, one may think of them as loans in that every thaler will be repaid after a period of time.”

  She gave them all a moment, her gaze finding each person in turn, then continued with no other questions forthcoming at this moment.

  “To return to Dame Katherine, there is the second matter which is the scale of these bonds. To that, I cannot give an answer, not one that is satisfying. It is rather straight-forward to justify the cost of a cathedral. For a library, though? Yes, by any and all accounts, this is beyond obscene.

  “Or rather, that obscenity is the reason.”

  With that sentence hanging in the air, she took a breath, these days long.

  “It is not enough that this would be the grandest library in the world. It must be so grand that none others may even entertain the thought of competing, that people the world over will hear of it and think it a mere myth.

  “Yes, one may hire very talented tutors for even a fraction of what I have requested of each present, I do not contest that. However, consider what it would mean to have the brightest minds nearby. Consider what it would mean to bring together so many people of such talent. Those people who may then teach at the academies, who may be more easily hired as tutors, who may discover or invent all kinds of marvellous things—things which we would naturally benefit from as their benefactors.”

  To her peers, she needed to appear traditional. How one could be traditional and yet change the world, that had been the question frustrating her, one for which she still doubted her answer.

  However, she could not spend her life waiting. Things like choices and answers rarely mattered. Life had a weight to it, content to continue rolling forwards unless met by a true obstacle. Her projects followed this philosophy too. A great weight in motion, that she needed only guide it around what obstacles she could, guide it back towards her goals if set off course by those obstacles that could not be avoided.

  These guests—as useful as their money would be, she did not need it. Even if she had to fund the entire library herself, she would, however long it took. For now, though, courting them made for the best returns. So she did, her st speech one that brought up many more little questions.

  Reluctance, chiding, disbelief, all lurking beneath carefully crafted sentences, hidden behind smiles, poorly concealed in voices.

  “With all due respect, this kind of question is necessarily misguided. The purpose of the library is to offer copies of works. If someone desires a copy, they may purchase one. If we would still entertain the possibility, rather than these books made to be cheap, one would think a thief better off picking the pockets of others there.”

  Many questions.

  “To ask if I truly believe I can repay the bonds, My Lord asks an empty question. I would not waste my guests’ time if I did not. The question, rather, is whether my guests trust in this belief. I could write down figures on a page, yet those, too, would boil down to trust. However, I will say that, whatever doubts my guests may have over my ability to repay, there can be no doubt of my ability to turn money into buildings, at a reasonable cost, in a reasonable amount of time.”

  Until, finally, all guests but one had left.

  “Julia did well.”

  She gave an empty ugh and, with a heavy smile, turned around. “Thank you. I would not say as much, though.”

  Her guest gave a titter, mouth covered for that moment, then shook her head. “No, you hold yourself to an admirable standard. We shall see how right I am in the coming weeks.”

  “I suppose we shall,” she said softly.

  In the silence which followed, her gaze drifted back to the door—to a coat rack beside the door.

  Her guest looked on with a bittersweet smile. “Have you heard from him?”

  She turned back, her smile contrite. “I am sure he has more important things to consider with how… fresh the war is,” she said, a touch quiet, and her hands tensed, curled into fists.

  “Men and their wars,” her guest said lightly.

  “This Lady and her wars.”

  For a moment, both stood still, her guest with an unusual hesitation. “I did not mean it as a criticism.”

  “Nor did I,” she replied, punctuating that with a titter. “Fritz and I are in agreement that King Sigismund goes too far. What little we can do, we would gdly. Still, it is difficult imagining the worst….”

  As she trailed off, her hand came to rest on her stomach, only to catch herself a moment ter and move it away.

  Another moment ter, her guest said, “The library, really, why am I forbidden from buying your bonds? You couldn’t be pnning to renege on them.” It was not an accusation, instead a statement: her guest knew well the worth of her trust.

  “I cannot give your husband any reason to keep us apart. As appreciated as your loan would be at this time, your friendship is a hundred times more so. It is easy to find money and hard to find such a good friend. And the children, how much I would miss them.”

  “Oh Julia, you say the sweetest things,” her guest said and, in a step, engulfed her in a gentle embrace. A motherly embrace, not that she had ever known one. A mother’s embrace nonetheless.

  For a moment, she was lost, then brought herself to pull away. “It would be a few years still, but I have secretly hoped Charlotte may come to like the girls’ academy. Otto and Little Julia too. When Fritz spoke of the pce where he received his education… I felt as if men have had too much of a say in all this. The way some of them speak of their children, it is as if they ck any fondness, and it is no wonder when their own fathers before them sent them to such awful pces. So I wanted to make a pce that, while firm, is not a punishment. Somewhere for these young lords and dies to learn. This talk of toughening them up, no, it is bullying. Cruel and meaningless. The stories Fritz told… it hurts my heart that he is still so kind and gentle with me.”

  She had spoken evenly, albeit that she slowed at some moments, which was unusual for her, and her tone at those moments carried a heaviness.

  And her guest listened, heard those nuances, a heaviness coming to her as well. “I am sure Charlotte will adore it.”

  She gave a soft smile, then leaned back in to hold her guest for another moment. “I hope so. It would be just wonderful to host her,” she said, then shook her head. “Look at me, still chatting away here. Shall we retire to the library for our meal? I have quite taken to it.”

  Her guest gestured, so she led the way. As they walked, her guest said, “Indeed, it is rather wonderful in its own way.”

  “Isn’t it just?”