The office is large but there’s very little floor-space. Scrolls and piles of parchment cover the shelves of the bookcases that line the room and overspill into clearly-organised piles on the floor. As a result, only Nicholas, Sirocco, and I enter the room. Sarran and the two guards stay outside, as do most of my Bound. Sirocco only enters it since she’s already on my shoulder – she won’t take up any more floorspace. The door closes with a click behind us, blocking the view of our entourage, though I can still sense my animal companions well enough.

  I turn my attention back to the office, looking now for the Genealogist who apparently works here. It takes me a moment to spot him. In the middle of the room is a large desk, almost invisible under the piles which cover it. Behind this desk sits a man, but it’s only when he stands up and bows briefly to Nicholas that I can actually see him properly, thanks to the piles practically hiding him when he’s seated. He also blends in pretty well with his surroundings since his tunic and trousers are the palest blue I’ve seen so far, almost white. He’s wearing a robe on top, unlike the other office workers in this section.

  The man looks ancient – a neat white beard that complements his ear-length white hair and contributes to his camouflage. His skin is wrinkled and saggy, the skin on his hands paper-thin and liver-spotted. He’s also got something of a stoop, his back bent. It’s interesting to see such signs of old age in a world where people can access magical healing, or have stats which can extend their lives.

  It makes me wonder exactly what age this man is – if he has a Class, he could be several hundred years old as long as he put some of his points into Constitution. And even without a Class, I refuse to believe that healers can’t do anything about aging, though I doubt they can cure it entirely, and maybe there are limits to what they can cure. So are the issues this man is showing because magic no longer works on him, or because he can’t afford to pay the healers to remove them?

  Coming out from behind the desk – stepping carefully around the paperwork in his way – the Genealogist approaches me, eyeing me over his half-moon reading glasses. He might be visibly old, but his gaze is still sharp and clear. No cataracts or dementia here, that’s for sure.

  “Your new heir, young Nicholas?” he asks in a voice which creaks more than his door did.

  “Yes, honoured Genealogist,” Nicholas answers politely. I can’t help my eyebrows lifting slightly in surprise – the Genealogist has addressed Nicholas with more informality than anyone I’ve heard so far, bar Sarran, and yet my patron doesn’t seem annoyed by it in any way. Who is this guy?

  With no answer to my question – yet – I follow Nicholas’ lead and don’t react when the man just stands there and looks at me, his sharp eyes seeming to take in every detail. I feel convinced that he’s spotted the slight error I made in the embroidery on my left hip, and the way Sirocco’s claws have made a few holes in the cloth on my left shoulder – there’s no point in fixing them while she’s sitting there, after all.

  The Genealogist hums and turns away to shuffle back to his desk. I almost sigh at the release of tension. I send a glance over to Nicholas and see him looking back at me with a mixture of amusement and sympathy in his eyes. I take it that this is something normal, then. Does this guy have a Class? Because it definitely feels that he used a Skill on me. Then again, one of my English teachers used to have the same ability to freeze me in my tracks and worry about the stains on my uniform from lunch, so maybe not.

  “Lord Nicholas? Please come forward,” the Genealogist voices, his tone polite but clearly commanding, even as he faces the bookshelf behind his desk. I see a brief flare of panic in Nicholas’ eyes and feel abruptly validated. I’m not the only one.

  Then Nicholas turns and quickly steps towards the desk, adroitly avoiding the piles of parchment that threaten to fall over if he puts a foot wrong. I shift closer carefully so I can see over the wall of parchment on the front of the desk.

  The Genealogist turns around to face us, a massive tome in his hands. I’m increasingly convinced that he has a Class because no man as skinny and old as he appears would be capable of carrying a book that big without looking like he’s at least a bit under strain. Which probably means this guy is super-old.

  He lays the tome on top of the documents he was working on – since that’s the clearest part of the desk, relatively speaking – with as much care as most people would use for a newborn. While he fusses over it, pulling a brush out of nowhere to dust it off and inspecting it closely while muttering quietly to himself, I examine the book.

  The tome is the biggest I’ve ever seen and clearly older than even the Genealogist. It’s thicker than my hand is wide, and at least my forearm’s length with its width being not much less than that. The cover looks like an oddly scaly type of leather – it might be crocodile skin or something similar, but given that we’re in a magical world, I wonder if it’s possibly dragonhide. There is nothing written on the cover, but there are what, at first glance, look like gems set into the leather.

  A brief, carefully controlled Inspect reveals that the gems are enchanted. In fact, they might even be slivers of a Core rather than gems at all. Following up with Inspect item, just for the sake of training that Skill, I’m pleased when it abruptly ranks up. I have been trying to use it as often as I can – and in the palace there have been lots of new objects to use it on – but still I wonder whether this book has helped in particular to nudge the Skill into Novice.

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  A quick review of the new Skill rank indicates that little has changed – the main difference is that I will apparently now start receiving information that I am not able to gain for myself otherwise. Hopefully the Skill will start being useful. I test it again on the tome, expending a small amount of mana.

  Already, I can see the difference. The first time I used Inspect item, it gave me the first sentence and half of the second. It didn’t tell me that the book is self-updating, nor did it say anything about crests or that it’s able to determine the status of someone’s life. Though that last might be a little invasive, I can see the use of it, especially when determining if someone should be named Lord of a House or not. Though I do wonder whether it indicates how the person died.

  I don't have time to experiment with what I might learn if I push a moderate amount of mana into the Skill.

  “Lord Nicholas, place your hand on the Records of Ancestry, if you please,” the Genealogist says finally, looking satisfied that the book is in decent condition. Nicholas puts his hand flat over the top of the gleaming red gems. “Hold it there….thank you. Please pull your hand away.”

  Nicholas does so and the Genealogist opens the cover and starts paging through it, muttering to himself. Though the old man doesn’t stay on any page for long, from what I can see each page holds a crest, a name, a small family tree, and some other information about the person featured. Some pages are filled with writing; others only include a few lines. But it seems that each is a member of the House of Titanbend. That must have been why he wanted Nicholas to touch it – to somehow only have the pages related to his family present. I wonder what would have happened if he’d opened it without Nicholas touching it.

  Since the old man is currently busy, I decide to ask Nicholas about a couple of the questions I had.

  “My Inspect Item says that this book is self-updating to an extent – what does that mean?” I ask him quietly.

  Not quietly enough – though I hear Nicholas draw in breath to answer, it’s the Genealogist who speaks instead.

  “Court records, world-impacting events, deeds of great renown or great infamy…the Records is a living document, young man. It cannot record everything you do in your life, but it receives and records many of the most important events.” He goes back to muttering and paging through the book.

  “To give some examples of what the honoured Genealogist explained,” Nicholas continues for him quietly, “the Records of Ancestry is linked into the court records, but not all will be recorded. For example, the events of this morning will most likely make their way into both of our entries since the summoning of an heir from another world is a rather momentous event. However, another court decision about, say, whether to increase taxes or not will most likely not be recorded unless it is the key factor which leads to an execution or similarly impactful event. Deeds of renown or infamy may be recorded depending on the number of people impacted or who come to know of them. It is an inexact affair, used more for posterity than anything else.”

  “What about if lots of people ‘know’ something, but it’s not true?” I wonder.

  “The Records will record it anyway,” Nicholas agrees with a wry twist to his lips. “Which is why no trial will ever use information from the Records as evidence in a court case.”

  So it’s a bit like a social media profile mixed with a news outlet. Not entirely reassuring, that.

  “And apparently it can register if someone is alive or dead – does it say how they died?”

  “Not especially, though if the death is from the person sacrificing themselves to save a city of people, for example, then it would be considered a deed of renown and so yes, it would be recorded as the final act in that person’s life. Otherwise, it will just indicate the person is dead and that is the end of it. Part of the process of being declared Lord or Lady of a House includes visiting the Palace Genealogist to ensure that one’s predecessor is indeed deceased.”

  “That makes sense,” I agree, though I wonder privately if there are ways of fooling the book – if it bases some of its records on what ‘everyone knows’, what if ‘everyone knows’ someone is dead, when in reality, they’re not? Before I can ask the question, though, the Genealogist interrupts my thoughts.

  “Ah, here we go. Nicholas Velnix Listin Titanbend. Please both touch the space here.” He indicates a spot in the family tree to the right of the page – a space underneath Nicholas’ position right in the middle. I note both of Nicholas’ parents' names with interest – and also the fact that he has two sisters. Had two sisters, maybe I should say – both of them are written in the same red as his parents, though one obviously lived long enough to have children as there are two more names underneath ‘Selana Velnia Tuthan Titanbend’ which are still in black. Which makes me wonder exactly why he hasn’t just named one of them as his heir instead of me.

  As we touch the page, black spirals out from my finger, and when we pull our digits away, I see my name written there: ‘Markus Luke Wolfe Titanbend’. I have mixed feelings about ‘Wolfe’ apparently becoming a second middle name – on one hand, I’m glad not to lose the connection to my past. On the other, I don’t exactly feel like a ‘Titanbend’. Not yet, at least.

  “Good, good.” The Genealogist flips several pages until a blank one is revealed. “Now, Lord Markus, place your hand on this page. Let’s see what this book has to say about you.”

  That sounds rather ominous.

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