Quoted By:
>SELECTED: The Athenaeum. Even the Cantonian scholars, never quick to praise the slaver empire, call this place the single greatest library in the known world. Your access will be limited by both language and your status as a foreigner, but even so there must be some knowledge of interest or utility to be found in its ancient halls. [Visit the Athenaeum]
As a child you had thought Father’s library was big, doubling as an office where most of the paperwork pertaining to land deeds and contracts not sealed with the shake of a hand were kept. As an adult you had reckoned that the Order of Names Library located at the Abbey of Motte-Fallavon was an impressive repository of knowledge.
In Pascae you had heard Young Lady Maria Hewitt speak of the place with a dreamy air, she even lent you a book called <span class="mu-i">Compedium of Cathagi Castes and Origins in History</span> when she learnt that you were visiting the City. Not that it has turned out to be terribly accurate beyond getting the basics of the Military, Merchant and Management castes as it describes them. Patrikas Ianthe, the exile of the scholar caste that you escorted to the Duke’s Ball, she had spoken at length on the knowledge contained therein that was coveted by the learned Canton man. And the vast majority of that was not considered Cathagi state secrets or the like, merely knowledge retained here and not widely circulated anywhere else. So you don’t know exactly what you had expected when you travelled here, other than a bigger version of the Abbey or Father’s library. That’s how you pictured it in your head at least, and that picture falls an avalanche short of the reality.
The Athenaeum is not a single building, but an entire compound. Almost a miniature city onto itself, a temple complex dedicated to the worship of knowledge. There are small buildings on the edge of the compound, still beautiful in their white marble but with a function in mind such as lodging for the dedicated scholars and welcomed guests or administrate or storage areas. But there is nothing about those that distract from the main centrepieces, the Pantheon of Libraries that encompass the core of the compound, each wall formed from gigantic slabs of white marble that must have been lifted by thousands of slaves under winch and pulley.
Purple robed soldiers stand guard at the entrances to the massive compound, but there is nothing to suggest that this is anything other than an utterly boring post. Despite the opulence of the place, to your shock no one is barred entry, any man is free to enter regardless of birth or citizenship. You wander through the halls of the greatest library in the entire world in awe, gawking like the barbarian the various quiet white robed scholars must imagine you are.
[1/?]
