by A J Hackwith
Echo drifted at the crest of the rise. Rise. Proper libraries didn’t have rises, or hills, or moss, or sunlight like a song. Proper libraries had shelves and books, and an indexing system and calling cards like any sensible—
Oh dear gods, he was beginning to sound like Claire.
Echo didn’t move as they caught up with her. Her face—Pallas’s face—was just as dull as it had been since it stepped out of the pond. She extended one hand and pointed farther down. Hero followed the gesture with his eyes to another of the canyon-like stone towers, cubbies worn with more age than the neat slab cuts they’d seen so far.
“You have something about the Unwritten Wing here? In the actual archives?”
“Actual archives,” Echo whispered, which Hero thought was rather cheating.
Ramiel exchanged a mystified look with Hero and nodded. “Well, we’ll take a look, then—er, may I?”
“Aye.”
Echo tilted her head back and forth, in a birdlike way that was entirely creepy, then began swanning back the way they came, leaving them in the stacks to presumably find their way out again.
Hero was entirely over the gimmick of this place. “Let’s see what the vulture has for us.”
Ramiel nodded, appearing to remember the task at hand past the wonder of the library. The Unsaid Wing had been cheerily empty upon entry, but as they wound farther back, the quiet lost the feeling of a living glen and took on the qualities of a held breath. Unwritten books were solid, held-together things, awake or asleep. But unsaid words were all fragments, sharp edges, like the shards of stone above their heads. The feeling of a precipice was too great. Hero kept glancing up at the sky, lost in lavender gloom and web work of stone lattice, as if the unspoken words would topple on them at any moment.
Folded sheaves gave way to rolled scrolls, which gave way to older, more eccentric materials. Unlike the words of the Unwritten Wing, these words were never meant for anyone but their intended recipient, so the artifacts felt no inclination to change, to demand to be read. An inherent laziness, in Hero’s opinion. Finally, Ramiel came to an abrupt stop several shelves down.
“Poppaea Julia.” Hero squinted through the blocky lettering on the shelf. “She’s here after all. The librarian that challenged Hell.”
“Supposedly,” Ramiel said. “It can’t hurt to look.”
Hero made a noncommittal sound. This had been his idea, but after catching glimpses of the kind of unsent tripe this library held, he doubted they’d find anything enlightening here now. The first few minutes he spent perusing confirmed his instincts. “This is all human nonsense before the woman had even died. There’s not going to be anyone with unsaid words for her after her death here. Nothing about the Library.”
The complaint didn’t slow down Ramiel in the slightest. He kept methodically examining shelves farther down, touching each scroll lightly, as if it was a treasure, holding it up to the light to read. His expression told the tales—Ramiel was not an expressive creature, but Hero had found himself gaining literacy in the way his arched brows knit in concern, the way the grim line of his generous mouth softened, just at the edges at small things. It was much more entertaining than the scrolls, at least, and Hero had to keep himself from staring.
“Here now,” Ramiel muttered. His brows did a caterpillar dance. Code: astounded surprise in the language of Ramiel’s face. Hero looked down to find the cause. The rolled papyrus in Ramiel’s hand was not yellowed ivory like the rest of the collection. The bleached surface was too white for the human-made papyrus of the day. Fine emerald script, spidery as tattered thread, crossed the scroll in tight, orderly lines.
“What is it?” Hero relented and crowded Ramiel’s shoulder to get a better look.
“Every unsent communication,” Ramiel mumbled with a shake of his head. “They really are thorough.”
Hero had no patience for slow reveals. Ramiel’s hand was blocking the way, but Hero’s eyes jumped to the blocky thick signature at the bottom of the page. “Revka . . . Arcanist?! As in Hell’s Arcanist?”
“It appears so.” Ramiel frowned as he unwound the scroll to read again. “It wasn’t always a position held by a demon.” Hero had a faint memory of Claire saying the same thing once. During one of the many obsessive attempts she’d made to train him to be a proper assistant for Brevity. Hero hadn’t bothered listening, since assisting wasn’t so hard and appeared to be simply doing what menial chores Brevity asked for. But it had been fun to watch the way Claire’s dark eyes had sharpened into storms as she berated him.
Over Ramiel’s shoulder, the text had taken on that wiggling, twitchy quality of library-to-library documents. Hero already felt a headache coming on—not that books could get headaches— but squinted his eyes determinedly until the ink resolved itself into a letter.
Librarian Poppaea,
You are an imbecile. You are a knacker-eared, fecund-brained bastard of ill-cast winds. You are a fool’s fool, a dunce among the blighted. I hate the day I ever learned your name.
“Well,” Hero said as he read, “this could be good.”
And I miss you.
“Oh, never mind.” But he didn’t stop reading.
The Library is in chaos. My own wing is in lockdown. Hell runs amok. And great wailing quakes of gods know what is the only indication I have that an Unwritten Wing even still exists. The Muses Corps, for lack of a better target, has been railing at me—me!—to do something, but of course there’s nothing to do. Hell is hell. It’s all very good to go on about the Library being an independent entity, but there’s no one to stop Morningstar on a rampage. He can’t get rid of us, I don’t think. Not all of us. But, gods, it sounds like he’s going to try.
What did you say?
What did you say, when you got this mad plan in your head? To challenge Morningstar for right to the domain? And then to claim authority, not on behalf of the Library—oh no, nothing as sensible as that—but on behalf of the BOOKS. Had you totally taken leave of your senses? Was my companionship so undesirable that you would seek to end your existence entirely?
I’m the Arcanist. My job is magical artifacts. As a golem, I am an artifact. Artifact and Arcanist. My domain is working with materials. As you used to say, things. Finding things. Keeping things. Fixing things. Yet I don’t know how to fix this.
I know you, Julia. I know what your first concern would be. “But are the books well?” you’d ask, voice getting that endearing fleshy squeak that humans do when distressed. I’m sure that’d be your first question. I wish you were here to shake. Of course the infernal books will be fine. You could drown the whole Library and the essential part—what makes the damned things so valued—would be left. I don’t know what that would even look like, but the unwritten books will outlive us all. The curse of unwritten books is to never truly live but exist forever.
I wish librarians had been half as cursed.
Where are you, Poppaea? When it failed, where did he send you? To your Blessed Isles, the land of heroes you spoke of? To Tantalus? Or to oblivion? Surely, what qualities you share with your damned books mean oblivion isn’t in store for you. The written and the writer are the same, after all. Perhaps Morningstar sent you to one of your books, to rejoin what you’ve missed for so long. Maybe you’ll be caught in your own story, ready to be read. I think you’d like that, really.
You used to tease me, sweetheart, about emotions. How stoic golems were, how passions must move so slowly through clay. But I am angry now, dear one. Angry at you. How could you abandon your post? Abandon our shared duties, our routine of care and curiosity?
How could you abandon me?
I may be mere clay and magic, not like your precious books. But I thought you’d cared for me all the same.
Come back, Julia. This can’t be the way your story ends.
I’ll read every book until I find you
.
Arcanist of the Arcane Wing, Revka bat-Rav
“A tragedy.” Ramiel’s murmur was like ground gravel against Hero’s skin. He must have stared at the papyrus long after reading it. Hero felt queer, like he was slipping between the loops of thick script.
“More self-pitying nonsense.” Hero shook his head and tried to focus on what had nagged at his attention. “I would have thought a golem would have been more practical.”
“Nothing more practical than loss. It’s a natural product of time,” Ramiel said quietly. Hero struggled not to wince. Of course the stoic old wart was still haunted by his own losses—Hero couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to be born in literal paradise and lose it. Hero hadn’t been born in paradise. If there was an opposite of eternal contentment, Hero had woken to that. He’d been born with a burning want in his chest, a hunger-pang sense of something missing. He supposed his author had put it there, though he’d never thought to hate her for it.
“Well. She could have done something about it besides bellyache,” Hero said weakly.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Ramiel’s glance at him, his expression softening to something dangerously near kindness. “Like a suicidal run at your own author and burning your own pages?”
“To be accurate, I didn’t burn my pages. She did. Authors are innately cruel like that.” Hero shrugged. He welcomed the opportunity to bicker. He held no illusions about his own mistakes and failures, not when they’d been performed so openly in front of all the Library. But the memory jogged through him. Hero frowned and tugged until Ramiel released the scroll into his hands. “But there was that line—”
“About cruelty?”
“No.” Hero chewed on his lip as he scanned the page. “There! The written and the writer are the same, after all.” He read aloud. “What does that mean?”
A bemused look settled on Ramiel’s face. The confusion curdled the half smile that Hero had noticed earlier. A pity. “I’m afraid you’re asking the wrong one. I never worked with your Library, not like Claire and Brevity. I know souls, not books.”
Yes, everyone loved to remind him how different Hero was. “Yes, I’m aware how unhelpful you are.” The huff came out a little harsher than Hero meant it, but the riddle had sunk its claws in and now he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was important. “The written and the writer . . .”
“You books do have a documented affinity for your human creators,” Ramiel tried.
And because he tried, Hero bit back the barbed reply that welled up. He settled for pinning the Watcher with a patient look. “And you have an affinity for swords and filthy raincoats. That doesn’t mean you are one.”
Ramiel took that with the same graceful acceptance he took every harsh word Hero had for him. It was infuriating, really. That had to be why Hero couldn’t stop. The Watcher’s brow furrowed as he scrutinized the letter again. “What qualities you share . . . it appears at least that this Arcanist was convinced that books could not be destroyed.”
“If that was the case, we wouldn’t have spent the last months with Claire and Brevity walking around as if we’d kicked their puppies,” Hero muttered.
“Their grief is natural, and sincere.”
There was a guilt in his chest that ached every time a stray comment caused the librarians to get that haunted look in their eyes. The defense of the Unwritten Wing had been his strategy, his. And it’d failed. If he’d fought harder, perhaps—but no. Hero had a policy about mistakes and failures. The guilt could stay and ache, but he wouldn’t pick at it. He had enough scars, after all.
Hero rolled the scroll closed impatiently. “Either the Arcanist is mistaken, or the librarians are. The existence of this damned ink supports the scroll’s claim. It’s not as if we can ignore that.” The scroll closed with a snap, and Hero caught movement out of the corner of his eye as he shelved it. The damned metal lioness stirred to her feet at the noise. Its gold eyes emitted a faint light as it tracked Hero. He tried to ignore it and began to pace. “Shame this golem woman wasn’t still Arcanist instead of Andras. We might have gotten some answers.”
“Or not had the question to ask in the first place.” Ramiel watched Hero with nearly as much concern as the cat. “I wonder what happened to her.”
Hero dismissed that with a wave. “Perhaps she got rusty. Surely your wing keeps some kind of record.” Hero paused midstep and turned back to Ramiel. “Of all the . . . Could the answers be in there?”
“The Arcane Wing?” Ramiel blinked. “Doubtful. If such knowledge was recorded, surely Claire—”
“Claire has been preoccupied with not drowning in the history of her regret,” Hero said, not ungently. “She—she can’t see straight since the coup. You know that. That’s why she needs us.”
Needs me, Hero wanted to say, but no, he did not believe in kidding himself. Ramiel had stepped in when Claire had been forced to reposition herself as the Arcanist, shoring her up with an implacable calm, a peace when all that Hero could offer was flippant distraction. They were both walking, nettling reminders to each other of what they once had been. Ramiel kept Claire standing, and Hero kept her on her toes.
Hero’s opinions on that were grudging and unresolved, so, as he did with all unpleasant things, he ignored them.
Ramiel nodded thoughtfully, as if Hero had merely commented on the weather. “Claire has been sequestered with the few documents the Arcane Wing holds. So, you are suggesting we should return, then, and search the wing on our own?”
“Yes—no.” Hero’s gaze strayed to the scroll he’d just put away. He led the way down the corridor the way they’d come. He listened but couldn’t hear the copper cat’s paws stalking across the moss behind them. “There’s one more thing we should investigate while we’re in this realm.”
“In the library?”
“No,” Hero said. “But perhaps it’s adjacent. The golem mentioned the muses—they’re a Greek creature, too, right?”
15
CLAIRE
Myrrh. First thing I did was investigate the material evidence. No, not the stories or characters—everything has been quiet on that front. But between my lessons with Bjorn, I have been conducting a clandestine study of the paper. I’m not so dead that I have forgotten haggling with the ragmen for my linens. Not yet. Provenance! Everything comes from something. Pages are made and remade: that’s the story I’m interested in.
First observation: there’s no sizing, no coating over the paper to keep it from absorbing ink too quickly as it dries. Which would seem impossible. What surface is made to absorb everything? What ink?
The coating a paper has to keep ink from soaking in immediately and feathering is going to be unique to the environment. A flour-based size works admirably in the dry desert but quickly turns to rot in humid countries. What are the material concerns of an immaterial, immortal library?
Apprentice Librarian Fleur Michel, 1736 CE
TO A MODERN EYE, ink looked like water. Colored water perhaps, like poorly brewed tea or the garishly colored sugar drinks of her youth. Claire knew better. She had been alive at the turn of that era, when the incendiary grit and gristle of war had led to a boom of new technologies, new ways of doing things. She’d started school learning her letters with fountain pens, but by the time she’d matriculated into the workforce, all the modern workplaces were driven by the plastic milled barrels of ballpoint. When it dried up, a pen was tossed, not refilled. What a wasteful idea that was. Ink became something that was a minor component of the pen, not the fuel for it.
There wasn’t a lot left that Claire could remember of her life on Earth, but she remembered the language of inks. The viscosity and flow, the way some inks dried on cheap paper, feathered and bone bleak, while others went onto fine vellum paper like a sigh, changing from dark to light in a single stroke. Inks had temperaments, personalities. And inks left marks, smudged fing
ers, smeared words, lost meanings.
A sound, like a weaponized rusty hinge, broke her concentration. Something pinched the end of one of her braids and pulled. It was a brief tug, a demand for attention. Bird cocked her head, regarding her with one flat eye and obvious accusation.
“Right, attributes.” Claire sighed, remembering to straighten her back for the first time in hours. The ache was a welcome change of pace. “It is slow to dry. A supernaturally high viscosity.” Claire ticked off the characteristics on her stained hand again. Bird appeared to listen intently but might have just been watching for treats. “Iridescent sheen when wet, but dries to a matte finish. Waterproof, tamperproof, smear-proof. Obviously.” Her blackened fingernails felt chalky to the touch.
The secret was here, in the evidence. Her talk with Walter had told her that much. She just needed to verify her hunch. Ink did not exist without the book. It could not be replicated, borrowed, or transplanted—though gods knew she’d tried countless times when attempting to repair Hero. A book could only hold the ink it remembered. A book was paper and ink together, existing as the story slept.
So, without paper there should be no ink. The books lost to the coup had burned, a tragedy that she was almost grateful she only remembered as aftermath. The haunted look Brevity got when talking about the burning was enough. The stories that had been preserved in those books died, trapped in so much ash. The ash that had been everywhere. Claire had spent days afterward afraid to wash her hands. It felt sacrilegious; it felt cruel.
She adjusted the bright light over the worktable, as if that would reveal anything more than her own reflection. The Claire in the ink was cast in shades of black, staring out at her from the pitiless surface like an omen of what was to come. Claire rubbed her clean hand against the gooseflesh that crept up the back of her neck. There was barely enough liquid in the bowl to coat the bottom, but light didn’t penetrate it at all. The ink had a lubricated loll when Claire tilted the bowl from side to side. That might explain why it never dried, no matter how long it sat. No film developed like on her skin; no pieces flaked away. Just an infinite, oil-slicked black, swallowing the light and every color in the spectrum and giving back nothing, nothing at all.