By the fifth day of the silence, the pages of the grain registry had begun to lose their sterile smell, replaced by the scent of the gray tallow candles Nila burned down to the wick each night.

The library had become her entire world. The northern light that cut through the rectangular window grew steadily colder as June deepened, casting long, sharp shadows across the thousands of leather-bound volumes that lined the stone walls. Nila sat in the high-backed timber chair, her gray wool sleeve stained with faint rings of black ink at the cuff, her eyes tracking the columns of the ledger.

She had stopped trying to read the...