Nine of Hearts

Keywords - Upright: knowledge that opens onward, a scholar's welcome  ·  Inverted: drawn in deeper, reading under someone's eye

Upright

The research succeeded and the librarian liked you enough to send you somewhere better. Information that leads to more information.

The research succeeded, and better: it earned you a guide. Someone who knows the territory of this knowledge has decided you are worth pointing onward - a rarer prize than the fact you came for. Doors open in sequence now; the trick is only to keep asking good questions.

Inverted

Each answer opens into a hall with another door, and you are further from daylight than you meant to be. The knowledge is drawing you into its own politics: whose collection, whose patronage, whose secrets brush against yours. And somewhere behind you, someone has begun keeping a list of what you have read.

In Play

Upright. The archivist likes Wynn's questions and writes her an introduction to the cathedral library, where the real records sleep.

Inverted. The introduction works - and the cathedral's librarian logs every folio she touches, as he logs everyone's, for readers his masters find interesting.