Still, thief or no, Lainuver is not that bad as a person. He is well worth the Lifekeeper’s title.

Bala Maraskaran. A former slave boy from Ebony Islands, now an apprentice of a clumsy, accident-prone man known as Kangassk Majesta. This particular Kangassk brought a good deal of disappointment to his father and now his apprentice is following the same steps.

Bala is sixteen. His skin is pitch-black; his hair is bushy; his smile is pearly-white and very, very powerful. This is the kind of smile that makes people forgive him a shattered ancient vase or an expensive sword broken on the same day it was bought. Bala has a heart of gold. At sixteen, he is still a big, kind child.

Irin Fatum. He is fifteen, just a year younger than Bala. This boy rarely unsheathes his sword. Just like his master – Kangassk Orlaya, a short and fragile woman – Irin prefers bow and arrows. Longbows are out of his league yet but even a shortbow is a serious threat in his little hands. Especially if the arrows are poisoned. A pebble is not a toy in Irin’s hand either. Anything that can be shot or thrown, he will use as a weapon.

He rarely speaks. His habit of being silent for hours while waiting for a perfect moment to attack became a foundation of his personality. Size and age differences aside, Irin Fatum, the most questionable of the young Lifekeepers in the library, resembles a smaller version of Juel.

Those are the oldest of the ten. They fell into their roles as soon as they met.

In the newly-established hierarchy, Juel Hak became the leader, Orion Jovib – the leader’s rival, Irin Fatum – the leader’s ally. Lainuver Boier, impressed with Orion’s wit and cunning, allied with the pirate’s descendant. And Bala Maraskaran, the kindness itself, just kept trying to make everyone be nice to each other.

The big boys paid little attention to the rest of the ten for those were mere children.

Pai Prior. A boy of thirteen. An ambasiath, just like everyone there but an ambasiath who has always dreamed of being a mage like his parents. His master – Kangassk Vesperi – did her best to keep the boy away from magic but he still kept learning new spells somehow. Sometimes it seemed to her that he was inventing them from scratch. Maybe that was true.

What else is absolutely true is that no power in the world can stop the boy from practising magic. Restraining bracelets could, but this is the kind of spell only worldholders are allowed to cast, to poor Vesperi’s regret.

Sainar and Vesperi thought long and hard what to do with the boy and finally decided to let him be. His self-made spells are too simple and weak to hurt his ambasiath potential anyway. All Vesperi has to do is to keep Pai away from serious magic.

There is always a lively, flickering fire in that boy’s eyes, the kind of fire a poet or an artist has when inspiration lends them wings.

Milian Raven. Or, rather, Corvus. He is twelve. They say the language his surname belongs to had been long dead even before the worldholders left the Primal World to create Omnis. Milian likes ancient languages but still prefers the modern form of his surname, because, in his opinion, it sounds better.

Young Raven is a bookish kid, so unlike his master Kangassk Marini, a talkative woman with a bubbly, cheerful character. She would prefer a noisy tavern to a cosy library any day. Her apprentice – quite the opposite. Milian prefers books to people and fantasies to the real world.

He doesn’t like the other nine boys being there. Oh how much he would give for them to go away, so he could look through all the library books in peace! But no, they are not going away. They keep talking, they keep arguing, they keep fighting over their places in the team.