‘Yes, thanks,’ said Effie. ‘Or . . .’
‘What?’
‘You don’t do nut milk frappés, do you?’
‘Nope,’ said Octavia. ‘Sounds more like something you’d get on the other side. But I can do your hot chocolate with nut milk, if you like? Macadamia, cashew or almond?’
‘Macadamia, thanks,’ said Effie. ‘Oh, and would you mind scanning me?’
‘All right, but your bun’s on the house, don’t forget.’
‘Thanks, Miss Bottle. I just want to know what M-currency I’ve got.’
‘All right, luvvie.’
‘Thanks, Miss Bottle.’
Octavia went and got her scanning machine.
‘What’s wrong with Lexy?’ asked Effie, when Octavia returned.
‘Stomach ache? Yep. That’s right. I was asked to send over a big bag of fresh mint leaves. Poor little thing. She’s been quite down in the dumps lately as well.’
‘I know,’ said Effie. ‘Do you think it’s the pressure of her M-grades?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Octavia. ‘You young people are always so intense about everything nowadays.’
‘Oh well. I’ll pop down to her house afterwards to see how she is.’
‘You’re a good friend,’ said Octavia. She took the scanning machine and waved it up and down in front of Effie like the bookseller had done. ‘M-currency pretty much dead on fifty thousand,’ said Octavia. ‘Phew. You must have been playing a lot of tennis.’
‘Nope,’ said Effie. ‘I don’t even think that works any more. I have no idea where it’s all come from.’
‘I noticed you haven’t been wearing your ring lately,’ said Octavia.
‘Yeah. I don’t think it works the way I thought it did,’ said Effie.
‘Oh well, looks like you can go and have some fun in the Otherworld, anyway,’ said Octavia. ‘I hear they’re all going about like animals now. It was in The Liminal just the other day. They can have cat’s ears if they want! Imagine that!’
‘I’ve seen it,’ said Effie. ‘It looks really nice.’
‘Pah,’ said Octavia. ‘You young people can do what you like. Put any kind of fashion on me and it would just look ridiculous.’
‘I bet you’d suit cat ears,’ said Effie. ‘Maybe white ones.’
‘Oooh, do you think?’ Octavia looked happy, and fluffed up her hair. ‘I wonder where you even get them.’
‘I think you have to sort of grow them,’ said Effie. ‘They’re very real.’
The door tinkled and Octavia turned to see who had come in.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to Effie. ‘I’ll be back with your bun in a minute.’
Effie’s eyes followed Octavia as she went over to the table in the corner, where a blond man was joining the woman with the book. They greeted each other with a kiss on both cheeks and then started speaking in low voices. Effie recognised the switch from English to Rosian and let the voices join the pleasant stream of jazz going into her ears. It was so nice and cosy in here, and so warm, and so safe. For a moment, a tiny moment, all Effie’s problems seemed to fall away. And then she suddenly felt that she was once more on the threshold of the new feeling she’d had in the market. That if she could just relax a tiny bit more she might get that tingling, tickly, joyous sensation back. But as soon as she concentrated on it, the moment passed.
Octavia delivered Effie’s cinnamon bun and hot chocolate but then seemed to have to rush straight back to the kitchen. Effie heard a loud hissing sound and the splash of something boiling over. Octavia Bottle was clearly trying to do Lexy’s job as well as her own.
The couple switched to speaking Milano, which Effie recognised, just, but didn’t understand. Blah blah blah . . . The burbling of their voices was still pleasant. The woman looked over and so Effie picked up her bun and pretended she wasn’t listening. And she wasn’t planning to listen, either. Why would she? Her bun was as delicious as always. Soft, dense and full of cinnamon, with thick swirls of crisp white icing on the top. Effie savoured every mouthful.
But then, amongst all the unintelligible Milano, Effie heard a word she recognised. Blah blah blah blah Diberi.
Effie took a sip of hot chocolate, trying to look as if she was lost in her afternoon tea and had no interest at all in what anyone happened to be saying about the Diberi. Casually, she reached up and touched the caduceus in her hair. She pulled it out and turned it over in her fingers, like a hairpin she needed to adjust. As long as she was touching the caduceus, Effie could understand any spoken or written language. When she was sure no one was looking, she closed one hand around it, while continuing to eat her cinnamon bun with the other.
‘Don’t worry,’ the woman was saying. ‘No one in here speaks Milano, I promise you.’
‘What about that girl?’ asked the woman.
‘She’s only a child. And she’s an islander. Where on earth would she have learned Milano? Relax. Anyway, it’s not as if you’ve even got much to tell, from the sound of it.’
‘Well, no. Mainly just what we know already. That there are definitely a lot more Diberi on the island all of a sudden. It’s as if they were paused, or frozen somehow – for about six years – but as of around a month ago they’re back. The Fifteenth Order of the Diberi, based in Vienna, suddenly reconvened and two of their most prominent members then came here, for reasons completely unknown. And now they seem to be gathering in the unremarkable university of this unremarkable little city . . . We have no idea why. And they’re planning some sort of raid at Midwinter. In two days.’
‘What for?’
‘They want to get to the Great Library. And then, who knows? There’s a prophecy that they are planning the end of the worlds, but it doesn’t come from a reliable source.’
‘Whatever happened to that publisher, Skylurian something?’
‘Skylurian Midzhar.’
‘Yes, she came here too. Also to launch a raid on the Great Library.’
‘She’s dead and buried. In the wrong order, I understand.’
‘But why did she come here? There are things we’re not seeing.’
‘Of course, some say there’s a portal near here that goes direct to Dragon’s Green.’
‘Impossible. I mean, why would there be?’
‘If there is, then maybe we can use it too.’
‘Why would we do that?’
‘Well, the Trueloves aren’t doing their job properly. Maybe we need to start doing it for them.’
‘Unfortunately there is a strong chance that this portal is inside a person.’
‘What? How?’
‘In the form of an internalised boon only to be used by that person.’
‘Then how would we use it?’
‘It would be impossible without the very darkest magic, which, obviously, we could not use.’
‘Hmmm.’ The woman’s voice, then the clink of china touching china as someone put a cup on a saucer.
‘Oh.’ The man’s voice. ‘Actually, there was one extremely interesting thing I did learn, but it’s just a rumour at the moment, so I’m not really counting it. It does make a strange kind of sense, though . . .’
‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense.’
‘Allora. OK. You will already be aware of the rumour that says that the missing book was put back recently.’
‘Indeed. And?’
‘Well, it turns out that the missing book may have been a history of the Diberi.’
There was a pause. Effie glanced over – she couldn’t help herself. The woman looked as surprised as Effie felt. She raised both eyebrows.
‘A history of the Diberi? But—’
‘I know.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Yes. But if it’s true, it gives a new complexion to the whole thing, and explains why there are suddenly a lot more Diberi around, particularly from the ancient orders dealt with in the book. No books can be removed from the Great Library without the ritual, supposedly. But what if
you managed it somehow? What if you found a way to remove the book that made your enemies real? What if you could defeat them by simply taking away the book that says they exist?’
‘Would it even work?’
The man shrugged. ‘Maybe it did. For a time. It now looks as if that’s what the island Truelove did. The effect of it probably killed her. I imagine it’s not a small matter to illegally take a book from the Great Library.’
‘But then . . .?’
‘Someone put the book back, and the Diberi returned.’
‘But . . .’
‘That’s the rumour.’
‘My God.’
‘And it might actually help us, in a roundabout sort of way.’
‘How?’
‘We need chaos, don’t we? And a sense of things getting worse.’
Effie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Of course, she was the one who had put the book back. But . . . surely she was not responsible for a great increase in the number of Diberi at large? She thought back to what she had learned about the Great Library. Its books were records, or statements, of reality, and whatever was in the Great Library was real. There were books on physics and astronomy and music theory and geometry: all the things that made the world work. New theories went into the Great Library when they had been proven or discovered.
Effie’s mind was swirling. She hadn’t thought that the brown book not being in the Great Library would have influenced any part of reality, but of course it had. It must have done. But everyone had been happy when she’d brought the book back, though – hadn’t they? And she’d risked her life to do it. She’d almost died. And all to save a history of the Diberi? The group that had murdered her grandfather (in this world, at least), and who were set on terrible plans to rule the whole universe somehow . . .
Effie again remembered Rollo’s words, but all of them this time. We can’t have a galloglass in our midst. We can’t have a galloglass with access to the Great Library. Bringing the book back was bad enough, however right it supposedly was. Who knows what would— What had he been going to say after that?
The woman on the table by the window finished her double espresso and looked at her watch.
‘Allora. Well, I’m going back,’ she said to the man. ‘See what we can do with all this.’
She got up and went over to the little desk where you showed your papers before going through to the Otherworld. Effie had never actually been through this portal. The first time she’d come here she hadn’t had her mark or papers, and then not long after that she’d got the calling card that took her directly to Dragon’s Green. She knew it was a one-way portal, and had no idea how you’d get back from wherever it took you.
She wondered about following the woman to see where she went, what she was going to do with this information. But . . .
The man drained the last of his coffee as well, then got up and put his coat on. He thanked Octavia Bottle and headed for the door back out into the Realworld. Effie was supposed to be checking on Lexy, but all that went out of her mind. She was now wondering, should she follow the woman, or the man?
Or follow her heart back to Truelove House and right into the Great Library, where she could finally put an end to the threat of the Diberi, just as her mother had obviously tried to do.
17
‘So then what happened?’ asked Maximilian.
Wolf sipped from the cup of strong, milky coffee that Nurse Underwood had given him when he’d turned up ragged and freezing after running the seven miles to get here. She had been on her tea break, but now she’d gone back to work. Wolf was in Maximilian’s bedroom with a blanket around him. The coffee had gone quite cold. Wolf had been talking a lot: he’d been telling Maximilian about his adventure in the Borders with the AI called Aizik.
‘I sort of woke up on the moor near Northlake in the middle of a blizzard,’ said Wolf. ‘With this.’ He held out an object to Maximilian. It was a man’s ring with a blue stone set in ornately crafted silver. It looked almost like a small shield that you’d wear on your finger. There were patterns on the ring that looked vaguely Celtic. And words, too, in a language Maximilian didn’t understand. They’d have to get Effie to translate them. When Maximilian took the ring from Wolf it felt heavier than he’d expected. In fact, it was so heavy he had to put it down on the bed.
‘It’s a boon,’ said Maximilian. ‘And it doesn’t like me. We’ll look at it properly in a minute. But what happened after all that stuff about the AI – which, I might add, was extremely interesting. In fact, I might need you to tell me the entire story again, and soon. I’ve been making a small study of the early history of computing in my spare time . . . But anyway . . .’
‘It was a bit confusing,’ said Wolf. ‘The lights were flickering more and more often, and Aizik kept saying “It does not compute.” Over and over again. There was an explosion a few levels down, smoke, sprinklers, shouting . . . I started running. And then I woke up on the moors, like I said. I had my rucksack with all my belongings and, obviously, this ring.’
‘Have you put it on yet?’ asked Maximilian.
‘No. I’m a bit scared. I mean, I’m definitely not scared of anything usually, but . . . I wanted to show it to you first. You know about magic rings. Remember when Effie put hers on for the first time and almost died? I want to know what this is before I start messing around with it. I also want to know how I got from halfway up a weird building in the remote Borders in the middle of a raging fire to the moors near here.’
‘You completed the book,’ said Maximilian.
‘You what?’ said Wolf.
‘You know you’ve just had a Last Reader experience, don’t you?’
There was a long pause, while Wolf thought about this.
‘Like you and Effie?’ he said.
‘Yep. I didn’t realise it had happened to me at first either. I thought it was all real. What book was it? I mean, you must have been reading a book when it started happening. That’s how it works.’
‘But I haven’t been reading any book. I’ve been in the Borders, looking for Natasha.’
‘Before that. I mean, I think that was all part of the book. The question is, which book. When did you last pick up a book?’
‘Night before last, maybe. Yeah, I got out of bed to read this weird book called The Answer.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘What do you mean, where did I get it? It’s in the bookshop where . . .’ Wolf realised that he still hadn’t told Max – or any of the others – that he was living rough in Leonard Levar’s Antiquarian Bookshop. ‘Never mind. I’ll tell you afterwards. I just had it in my, er, bedroom.’
‘OK, so it looks as if you were the Last Reader of a book called The Answer. And you got this boon at the end of it. I bet you’ve got masses of M-currency as well.’
‘Yeah,’ said Wolf sadly.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Maximilian. ‘You should be happy. You’ve survived being a Last Reader – which, apparently, not everyone does – and when we work out what this boon is we’ll probably know what your art is too. And with all your M-currency you could probably try to get to the Otherworld. There are portals that the Guild haven’t registered yet. As long as you’ve got enough lifeforce you can go through without your mark or papers or anything.’
‘Great,’ said Wolf half-heartedly.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Maximilian. ‘This is about Natasha.’
‘Yep,’ said Wolf. ‘I did all that to get her back, and I don’t think she was even there.’
‘Yeah,’ said Maximilian. ‘I know. The same thing happened to me when I was a Last Reader. I kept thinking I had some connection with my “uncle” in the book, that he might lead me to my father. But he wasn’t my real uncle. It’s just one of the ways the story fits with you and gets you involved with it. And then it’s even more unnerving when you find out it’s just fiction.’
‘I’m basically back at the beginning,’ said Wolf.
�
�Well, maybe not entirely,’ said Maximilian. ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to use your boon to help you in some way. We need to work out what it is. I’m guessing it relates to your art – your secondary ability. It’ll be very exciting to know what that is – you’ll get a whole new set of skills to go with the ones you already have. And we’re going to need new skills. Remind me to fill you in on the latest plans of the Diberi. They’re planning to kidnap Effie, for some reason, although she doesn’t seem very scared. But we’re all supposed to be in training to help defeat them.’ Maximilian got up. ‘OK, so I can’t ask Mum to put on the electric again, since she’s not here, and the dim web isn’t working that well at the moment anyway. Let’s see if some of these will give us a clue.’ Maximilian went to his bookshelf and pulled out several ancient-looking catalogues. He put them on the bed next to where Wolf was sitting. Artefacts from the Otherworld, one was called. Rare Boons, was the title of another.
‘Wow,’ said Wolf. ‘Where did you get these?’
‘Oh, I’ve been making a small study of boons,’ said Maximilian. ‘I have a modest collection of these catalogues. I can’t remember where I got them. Mail order, probably. Ages ago, before I epiphanised and found out it’s all real.’
‘Amazing,’ said Wolf, opening one. ‘Look at all these swords!’
‘I wonder what that stone is,’ said Maximilian, pointing at Wolf’s ring. ‘It’s blue. I should know, but I don’t. It’s not sapphire, I don’t think. It’s not shiny enough. Lexy would know. Maybe I’ll try paging her. Once we know what it is we’ll be able to work out what it does.’
Maximilian entered Lexy’s number a few times, but he got no reply. While the pager tried once more to connect, Maximilian thought again about everything Wolf had told him.
‘You told the AI to read the Tao Te Ching,’ Maximilian said. ‘What is that?’
‘It’s a book of Eastern philosophy,’ said Wolf. ‘Like a military book, but not exactly. More spiritual, I guess. It tells you about battles, but says that you should retreat to attack, or not even attack at all. I’ve read a load of military books recently, and they all become really philosophical and deep after a while. Like The Art of War. And Plato. Oh, and War and Peace.’
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