Vane found the archive scholar exactly nowhere near a desk.
He'd been directed up the spiral stair to an office that turned out to be empty, a checklist and a cold cup of tea sitting abandoned on the blotter, and had followed the only other sign of life in the room — a narrow door standing ajar at the back, leading into a second, older stack he hadn't known existed behind the general archive. He found the scholar three shelves in, halfway up a wheeled ladder, one arm buried to the elbow in a gap between two crates.
"You're early," the scholar said, without looking down. "Good. Hold the ladder."
