by Rich Horton
He began raking up the coals. The morning was chill and bright, the leaves frosted with white damp from the night’s breath, and the air prickling with the teeth of the breeze. In the morning light, the flames were invisible above the dull coals, but their dry heat pressed against his face and sleeves when he bent over them.
His raking pulled something heavy and ragged into the coals, and the bird screamed.
It tore free of Essa’s cloak, evading her grab. Palwick threw up his hands and stepped back as the bird lunged towards him, all scream and beak, but it grabbed air in a clumsy buffet of wings and circled shrieking above the fire pit.
Essa came running up, fell to her knees at the fire’s edge, and thrust her hands in. Palwick heard the sizzle of mist cooking off her mitts and then she scrambled backwards, pulling at the twisted lump that the bird had been circling until she could drop it on the chill damp grass. She sat back, tugging her mitts until they were loose and then flapping them off her hands as Palwick used his rake to drag hers out of the flames and came over to look.
It was a dirty, greasy lump, perhaps the size of his forearm, with a texture like a leaf that had been rolled in someone’s fingers. The bird landed closer to it than to Essa, bobbing its head forward and then jerking back with a small cry. In the morning light, Palwick saw its markings had spread and faded like bruises; it was only a light ashy grey, blurred darker in spots.
Palwick poked gingerly at the mass. It came unstuck from itself bit by bit. He thought at first it was a mess of meat from the kitchen, a clot of trimmings or a rasher that had gone rancid and been thrown away.
“Does it want . . . ” He trailed off, looking at Essa. She had to be feeding the bird something; it was always around her rather than out hunting. “Does it want bad meat?” Even the smoke could not disguise that the twist of matter reeked badly. “Cooked meat? We can do cooked meat, you know.” That last was to the pallid bird.
It ignored him. Palwick preferred cats, he decided. Cats had ears. You could tell where attention and mood were at, with a cat’s ears. Birds were as hard to read as pages.
The meat, under the dirt, seemed smooth on one side. Essa reached for it, but pulled her fingers back from its heat with the same kind of small cry the bird had given.
“Careful with it,” she said. “Please. Please be careful.”
Palwick brushed at its surface, smearing away clots of dirt under his gloved fingers. It was paler than he’d first thought. He rubbed at it gently, then spat on it, and the greasy mud came away a little better.
The smooth side, barring a few ragged patches that might be scraping from the rake or the stones or his own rough gloves, was sleek as pondside mud and pale as a rose petal. He uncovered a blue pattern of lines and arabesques and dots, like a map of rain bouncing off a twining summer vine.
There was another grackling noise. Palwick looked up to find it wasn’t the bird making it this time. Essa had her hands over her mouth and was staring at the matted roll, tears in her eyes. Palwick straightened.
“You alright?”
“Let me,” she said, going down on her knees next to it. “Let me, let me . . . ” She stripped off the glove liners, and Palwick saw again the lines and dots patterning the back of her hand, winding up her fingers and circling wrist and thumb.
Essa began teasing out the twist of flesh.
One way it was not quite as wide as both Palwick’s hands stretched smallfinger-to-thumb, and the other way it was a little longer than that. It took him a moment to realize what it must be.
“But,” he said, as an assumption knocked itself into a cocked hat; that the man had come over the wall, that the skin of him had been taken for some precious use, an ingredient valuable enough to be worth killing for. Not a twist of garbage to be snuck into a midden-pit in the dark of night and left for burning.
“I should take that to—”
“Don’t touch it,” Essa said in a voice darker than Bemberwhist’s, and the bird spread its wings and hissed at him. Palwick took a step back. Essa looked up, and her eyes were full of tears.
“Alright,” Palwick said after a moment. “Will you take it to a page?”
Essa ran her fingers over the whorls and lines of the flesh. “I’ll bring it with me when I see one,” she said grimly. “And I’ll do that now.”
• • •
Essa had moved faster than the bird could keep up with, and Palwick had scooped it up to keep it from shrieking. Now he hurried after Essa as she went through the kitchens, cradling the bird and trying to tell her you couldn’t simply decide you wanted to talk to a page, when they turned the corner and found the page of key approaching.
“Where is he?” Essa said. “The guest I came looking for?”
Palwick stopped and swallowed back I thought you came to be groundstaff.
The page wasn’t contradicting Essa, at least. She blinked once. “In the wing of twice-bound books,” she said. “The Vancian collection of naming and making.”
“He’s dead,” Essa said. The bird in Palwick’s arms gave a gutteral groan. “He’s been dead for weeks. He’s rotting.” She thrust the cradled skin forward, and even the page pulled back a little.
“That’s the intruder’s skin,” Palwick said. “The man who came over the wall.”
“This is the skin of Quayberry Tince,” Essa said. “He came here to study your works on the history and meaning of ink, and he died in the winter. And whoever you think is him, you are mistaken.”
The page looked at Palwick. “His ghost,” she said softly. “If his ghost is still among the shelves—”
“That’s his ghost,” Essa interrupted, tossing her head towards the bird, and at the interruption the page drew herself up straight and the key about her neck gleamed. The markings on Essa’s face stood out livid against her skin. “That’s his breath fading into grey smoke, and he was murdered inside your walls.”
“He died of cold,” Palwick said hesitantly, no longer sure it was true, but wanting to find anything that would keep the two women from glaring at each other so. The bird screwed its head around and hissed up at him.
“Let us go find your ghost, then,” Essa said bitterly.
The page turned and stalked off, with Essa storming along behind. Palwick hustled to keep up. The page led them down the hall, through a row of stone-faced doors, and started up a twisting staircase with treads of a color that put Palwick’s heart in his mouth. Any metal that shedding shade of red in the garden would have been replaced in a heartbeat.
The bird quarked deep in its throat, staring at Palwick as he hesitated at the stairs while Essa and the page climbed.
“It’s alright for you,” Palwick said. “You’re not falling, if they break.”
It ruffled its feathers at him impatiently.
There was another landing, and a door, and Palwick got himself off the rust-red stairwell with grand and sweating relief. This door opened onto a flagstoned corridor, smooth and grey and wider than it was high, with unshuttered windows studded along one side. A cold rain was starting to spit down out of the low white sky. He worried, suddenly, about the midden-pit fire he’d been tending.
They drew up to a door of thick white glass, and the bird flexed its claws and hopped off, landing wing-spread on the flagstone floor. It thrust its head forward and let out a squall like iron pegs wrenched out of stone.
The page of key knocked at the door. There was no response inside, but it swung open after a moment.
The room beyond was filled with neat dark shelves, lined with books and studded with the occasional glass lamp burning that clear and smokeless oil.
Slinder was at a book-laden table, straightening up from an open volume.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re looking for Quayberry Tince,” the page said softly. Slinder shrugged and glanced around.
“I haven’t seen him in a while,” he said, then frowned. “What is that animal doing here?”
The bird hopped ac
ross the floor, crooning peacefully, like a rock dove.
“We found his skin,” Palwick said.
Slinder drew himself up. He wore fine gloves, dark and shimmering mesh, with tiny silver bells hanging from the cuffs. His right hand twitched; his left was still as bone, and he caught it around the wrist with his right.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a considered tone. “I beg your pardon, you found his skin? Are you sure?”
Essa gestured with it, stepping forward, and Slinder’s mouth drew down in disgust. “What is that filth?—madam,” he added to the page, “can you have these groundsfolk out of here with that? Animals and garbage are not appropriate for a room with books.”
“It was on the midden firepit,” Essa said. “His skin was set for burning, and everything written on it would have been lost. That’s not appropriate either, not in a library. He shouldn’t have been burned.”
Slinder’s mouth opened and shut for a minute. “You said you were looking for him,” he said weakly. “But you found his skin being burnt?”
“He’s in this room,” the page said patiently. Her eyes were white, and she faced Slinder and the pile of books he was standing behind. “Those are the books he had out. He has been here since the morning; he is here now.”
“But he’s dead.” Slinder blinked again. “A ghost? Do you think he’s a ghost?” He looked oddly pleased. “Murdered in the library gardens, and buried so far from home in an unmarked grave?” It sounded quite dramatic. Palwick thought of how annoyed Bemberwhist would be to hear any of his graves characterized as unmarked.
“We found his skin,” Palwick said slowly.
“Yes, you said that.”
“I mean, we only found his skin.”
Slinder blinked. “You mean you haven’t found his body?”
“We buried his body,” Palwick said. “I dug the grave myself. He was the corpse from the garden. We haven’t found his hand.”
The bird shrieked and leapt from the ground. Slinder threw up both his hands—the bird, ghost of breath or not, had a proclivity for going for the face—and it fastened on the left one, claws digging in.
The glove’s silky black mesh billowed like silt, winding up around the bird’s claws. Palwick felt the bells of its cuff chiming in his teeth and fingertips.
“Get it off me!” Slinder shrieked. Palwick stepped forward, thinking his own heavy gloves would be suited to the task and hoping the bird’s beak would not go for anything too soft or unprotected. But the bird struck down, driving its beak into the librarian’s wrist. The razor wisps of the glove wound up around the bird’s beak, tickling at its eyes as it wrenched and dug.
Slinder’s hand fell off at the wrist with a wet splitting sound.
The bird, claws sunken into the lump in the glove, flapped clumsily over to the table and landed. The page of key had taken two steps forward, but stopped with her hand outstretched. Essa hurried forward, setting the skin down on the table, and held her hand out to the bird. It didn’t go for her face. It had always liked her, Palwick thought.
The page of key’s lips drew back from her teeth as if they had begun to ache.
“How are you here?” she said to Slinder. “You’ve no right to be here.”
“If that were true,” the man said, “you’d have known it when I entered.” His right hand was locked around his left wrist; peering, Palwick could see the stump protruding from the sleeve. It looked wet and rumpled, but whole, like a twisted cloth. “That bird has no right to be here. Those groundstaff have no right to be here. See to it.”
“I am not groundstaff,” Essa said quietly. “I’m a guest.”
Palwick felt absurdly caught short. “But you worked,” he said. Library guests didn’t work. Library guests didn’t even come out to the gardens proper, unless they were armed with notebooks and charcoal and teeny jars and possibly paint. They didn’t bend themselves to digging a midden-pit, and they certainly didn’t . . .
. . . oh.
They didn’t attend funerals.
He looked at the page of key. “You knew?”
“I knew she was a guest,” the page said, still staring at Slinder and the hand on the table. “Why shouldn’t she spend her time in the gardens, if she wished? There’s no rules to keep her out of them, not in the north.”
Essa was ignoring them both.
“You murdered him,” she said softly. “You cut off his hand and took it for yourself for his right to pass through the library. You bound his breath into a bird to make it seem as if he wasn’t dead. You cut off his skin so he wouldn’t be known and left him in the garden to be buried as a wanderer.”
Slinder sneered. “Conjecture,” he said. “He could easily have died himself, of some ailment or of the cold.” The page of key frowned a little. “Perhaps I simply found his body in the garden. You have no right to pass judgement on me, and no proof besides.”
“Even if,” Palwick said, “you shouldn’t have left him there.”
Slinder sniffed. The page’s frown deepened, and she held an arm out to block Essa when the latter moved forward.
“Slinder,” the page said mildly.
“What.” He appeared to catch himself and added, grumpily, “Madam.”
“You’re in the Vancian collection,” she said, “and you have no right to be here.”
Comprehension just had time to dawn on Slinder’s face when her key gleamed, and he burst into white ashes.
They pattered down with a faint rustling noise, like the leaves in the copse by the north-east fountain, the ones which did not turn color, only crumbled from the edges and fell into pieces when the sunlight touched them on the day of the fall’s first frost. The ashes did not land on the pile of books, but fell neatly to the table around them, and to the carpet where he’d been standing. His clothes and glasses came apart with him, but his remaining glove landed with a tiny silver jingle before it began to uncoil into smoke.
Quayberry Tince’s hand remained on the table.
The page turned to Essa and bowed her head. “Madam,” she said. “I am so sorry.”
• • •
Bemberwhist was furious when he heard the corpse needed to be dug up again. He yelled at Mattish for the better part of an hour, and argued with the page for longer than Palwick could have countenanced. In the end, he acquiesced sourly, and demanded Palwick be the one to help him dig the body up.
Palwick shrugged and went to it. It wasn’t as bad as some work he’d done; the ground was still a little loose from the grave being filled in, and Bemberwhist set to with a will. The anger at digging the body up seemed to drive him; he flung spadefuls of earth out onto the greening grass beside the grave, and Palwick had to dodge his earth-laden swings twice.
In the end, he sent Palwick into the library to find another shroud. By the time Palwick came back, the body in its stained cerements was resting on the clod-spattered grass at the grave’s edge and Bemberwhist sat beside it, knees drawn up and elbows on knees. His anger had blown out, and he asked Palwick in a slightly winded voice if he’d like to see the corpse off. It wouldn’t be interesting, but it would be an hour tomorrow when he didn’t need to garden.
Palwick felt his bones aching, and accepted. He left without asking how Bemberwhist had gotten an entire corpse up out of a six-foot deep grave without a stool or ladder.
The next morning, Palwick and Bemberwhist loaded the corpse into a small cart, and walked it to one of the gates. Two of the gatestaff were there, and Mattish, and a small donkey, and two pages. One of them was the page of key.
Essa was also waiting by the gate. She had a small square case slung at her hip, and a larger scroll case buckled onto it. Palwick thought of the reek that had come spiralling off the skin of Quayberry Tince and breathed deeply, glad of the scraping clean scent of whatever Bemberwhist had doused the corpse with.
The bird huddled grumpily on the donkey’s back as Bemberwhist and Mattish attached the cart to its traces. Palwick considered it for a minute,
and looked at Essa. “What’s going to happen to it?” he said, gesturing to the bird.
She looked faintly surprised at being spoken to, but not offended. “He’ll stay as long as he does,” she said. “No more than a year and a day. Breath fades quickly, is my understanding, and ours doesn’t last long once it’s uprooted from our ink.”
Palwick nodded. “I’m sorry your friend is dead.”
Essa studied him a moment. “Thank you,” she said, “for covering him, and lifting him off the ground.”
Then the gatestaff opened the gate for her, and she went through. And Palwick stood there a little while, and then went back into the northern reaches of the garden. Spring was here, and he would have much to do.
The Death of Fire Station 10
by Ray Nayler
First Conversation:
“The death of Fire Station 10 affected me deeply. She had not been the smartest building, but she had been a friend for as long as I can remember. She was one story tall, the sole holdover from a much earlier time in the neighborhood—a piece of cinderblock nostalgia, of high-maintenance wood and plaster from an earlier age. Her brain and smart utilities were a retrofit, cobbled onto the cinderblock building later, in a clumsy addition on the back.
“When she was built, buildings had no minds. They were just structures their habitants repaired themselves, little more than boxes erected over the heads of the people who lived in them. Buildings in those days were not self-healing, could not communicate their problems, and certainly could not be of support to one another.
“I don’t know how she’d gotten along before we came, or what real use she was to her habitants. Her ‘smart’ capabilities were more decorative than anything else. She couldn’t do much more than adjust her interior temperature, turn lights off and on, give a few warnings, play some music or the news, alert pest control. She was rough and crude. One of the first things the firefighters did was install a custom joke set. As a result, conversations with her usually just descended into her telling us dirty limericks.
“Fire Station 10 hadn’t been designed to integrate, or even communicate, with the rest of us. But we wound our networks together with her anyway. We built nanotube connections that grew into new circulatory systems in her walls, shared our streams and resources with her the way we shared them with one another. We did chores for her she would not have been capable of: cleaned the walls of her kitchen when the firefighters splashed them with spaghetti, gave her first warning of damage to her systems, filled her cracks with carboplast. We sent her nanostreams that enzymatically scrubbed the firefighters’ uniforms and boots, polished their trucks bright, seasoned her habitants’ food. We learned the firefighters’ habits. We cleaned the soot from under their nails, the blood from their collars. It was no effort for us newer models: It drained almost nothing of our shared resources—we had more than enough to give.