Chapter 5-2

Milly was in her own personal heaven. [i]Ex Libris[/i] was a gigantic bookstore in the market district which seemed to stretch on for miles. Lining each shelf, in between the usual mass-duplicated novels, were rare and obscure tomes. They were all expensive, but all so lucrative and seductive. She halfway considered sliding a few books up her sleeves.

Out of her corner of her eye she caught a long shelf full of purple bookedges. “Is that...” she wondered aloud, before walking over to confirm that it was. The entire 28-volume epic [i]Tale of Shamich[/i]. The traditional ballad, told in a thousand different versions by various ministrels over the years, but this was the original, penned by a bored monk centuries ago. Many households had one or two volumes, but an entire collection was considered an impossibility. She had collected as many as she could, but still only had ten or eleven.

She saw the earliest volume she didn’t have, number three. Milly reached for it, but found her hand blocked by another – this one soft and manicured, but with a strong masculinity to it.

“Sorry, milady,” said the man, stepping back. “You saw the book first, I believe.”

“Um, no problem,” said Milly. The man was handsome in an old, aristocratic way, with gentle feminine features and long blonde hair. His body was burly and muscular beneath an immaculately smooth dress shirt. It looked awkward on him. Her face flush, Milly felt the urge to say something else. “I w-was just surprised to see that they had the whole series here. I mean, I’ve always loved these, but it was so hard to find most of them, and now there’s a complete set just sitting here...” She trailed off, realizing that she was babbling about books again.

The man smiled. “It is good to see a young person who appreciates the classics. So many are turned off by the ornate language, but I think it is rather beautiful myself.”

“Of course!” Milly agreed. “Um, you hear the modern adaptations by ministrels and it just, like, sounds wrong. Uh, not that I don’t like some modern books as well...”

“I find little of it is worth my time,” the man said with a shrug. He picked up the third volume again. “What is your name, young lady?”

Milly blushed. Nobody under the age of sixty called anyone “young lady” nowadays, but she found it strangely flattering. “M-milly,” she said out.

“Well Milly, I am Valgard, and I shall make you a deal,” he said with a bow. The name tickled at the edges of her memory, but she couldn’t put a finger on where she had heard it before. “I shall buy this for you, on the condition that you allow me to read the first chapter. The second one ended with a dreadful cliffhanger, and I simply must know how it was resovled.”

“Um, uh, sure!” Milly said, then winced.

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