A/N: I wrote the bulk of this story nearly four years ago, in early 2010, I believe. However, there were things about it that just didn't work, and I couldn't seem to figure out how to fix it, so I set it aside. I always meant to come back to it, though. I had some extra time during my holidays this year and took another stab at it. It's been a long while since I posted a chaptered TSS piece, but I hope this story will be of amusement to a few people anyway.

Crimes

If love be a crime

Then guilty am I

And I'll happily do my time, my time

I'll happily do my time

– Renais folk song

Prologue: Vandalism

After all his years of training as a monk and healer, the smell of libraries was far from unfamiliar to Artur. It was that lingering scent of old bindings and glue, slightly musty but comforting somehow.

The two storey domed gallery that was Castle Renais' library always made him pause to crane his neck and peer up at its high ceiling. Such a grandiose affair compared to the cramped rectangular hall in the temple where he'd been trained. He sighed as he strode down the main aisle, casting glances left and right. Everywhere he found robed figures, more than he'd ever seen at one time in Renais, but none of them was the mage he sought.

He found Lute after some ten minutes' search, hunched over a book in the back corner of the library. When she heard him approach, she raised her head and cast a baleful glance over her shoulder. Her air softened when she saw it was him. "I thought you were one of those skulking dark mages, coming to distract me."

"Well," said Artur, amused by her lingering distrust of Knoll's group of apprentice mages, "I admit, I did come to distract you."

Her eyebrows rose ever so slightly.

"So what are you reading?" Artur asked.

"A tome related to dark magic."

"But you use anima magic. Why are you reading spells you can't use?"

Lute tilted her head and peered at him as if he'd asked her why two and two were four. "I need to better understand dark mages. You never know what sort of trouble they might cause."

"But, Lute, you know Knoll. He fought with us during the war. You don't really think..."

Lute sniffed and turned her eyes back to the book. It was an old volume, pages made of thick parchment, the sinuous script written in a style he had rarely seen in the temple's collections. For a minute, he squinted at the page, painstakingly decrypting the long strings of words squeezed close together to save space. "Lute..." he whispered.

She nodded once. "It's very obscure."

"It's very dangerous," Artur hissed.

With great care, as if she were handling a holy relic, Lute closed the book to show him its cover. There was a symbol scorched into the wooden book cover, burned through the leather casing. "It was sealed," he said.

"It was. Once."

"You're not the one who broke it?"

She shook her head. "No. It appears that it was done long ago. The volume was tucked away in a dusty corner of the stacks. Most of it is fairly innocuous as far as dark magic is concerned."

"But the part you were reading..."

She opened the book again to the page in question. "This seems to be the only truly interesting part."

"Interesting? That spell should be sealed away again. In fact it should be destroyed."

Her brow furrowed. "I'm not ceratin that I can agree with you, Artur. Certainly it should be kept out of the hands of... them," she said, waving vaguely towards the rest of the library, which still swarmed with Knoll's comrades, "but destroying knowledge isn't an acceptable practice."

"It's not safe," Artur said. "How did you even find it?"

"I was asked to research certain arcane matters. I stumbled upon the book during the course of my search."

"Asked by whom?"

Frowning, she closed the book once more and rose to replace it on the shelf where she had found it. She had to stand on the tips of her toes to reach it. "We can discuss this another time, Artur," she announced. "You came here to speak to me, didn't you?"

Setting aside his concerns for the moment, he allowed a smile to return to his face. "It's lovely outside and I was hoping you'd join me for a walk."

"A walk to where?"

"Nowhere. Just a walk. With me?" he asked, eyebrows raised.

For a moment he thought he was going to have to explain the concept of taking a walk to her, but then she murmured, "Oh," a flush creeping onto her features.

He offered his arm. After a moment's hesitation, she took it.

Artur had not, however, forgotten about the book. If Lute refused to destroy it then perhaps they could see about re-sealing it or having it stored in a safer location. That evening, he returned alone to the library, making his way to the back corner where he had seen her reading. The tome was still there on the shelf. With great care, he pulled it down and opened it on the table at which Lute had sat.

His heart skipped a beat when he turned to the page they had argued about. It had been cut out with great precision, the rest of the volume having sustained no damage from the extraction.

Artur let his fingers trail over the stub of the page. "Lute..." he whispered.