by A J Hackwith
“What?” Brevity echoed.
“We don’t fix the humans. The books—that’s what’s worth saving. You said it yourself back there. That’s your duty, isn’t it? And if we fix the unwritten stories, the humans will sort themselves out.” Not that Probity seemed to care about mortal problems. She faltered, chewing on a lip before pressing forward. “Have you thought about what I proposed earlier?”
More than thought about it. The possibility burned a hole in Brevity’s pocket. “Maybe.”
Probity hesitated, allowing the silence to draw tight between them until she could be certain of what wasn’t being said. What Brevity couldn’t say but was ready to consider. Probity nodded once, expression easing. “‘Maybe’ is good enough to explore the possibility. If we can just find a way to get a sample of the unwritten ink the Arcanist is keeping.”
“I might . . .” Brevity began slowly. She took a breath, squeezing her eyes shut before committing to the door she was about to open. “I might already have the answer to that.”
Brevity inched her fingers into her pocket and withdrew a single vial of ink.
It took Probity a moment to register it. Not the whipping, reaching tendrils of gold and violet that would have been Lucille’s ink. Her dark eyes narrowed, then widened as she recognized the static cloud, the chopped-up color of error and loss, as it roiled off the ink inside.
“The unwritten ink,” Probity breathed.
“I switched them,” Brevity confirmed, embarrassed at the guilt she felt. Claire would notice eventually, but it would take her a while, not seeing the colors of the world as muses did. “One experiment—one. Just to see if your idea works. And the books have to be protected—”
“We won’t be needing the damsels for this, or any of the books,” Probity reassured her, face blooming wide and hopeful. “I have volunteers—muses. Oh, sis, we can do this. We can do this.”
Probity made a delighted sound and launched herself off the desk. Brevity barely had time to pocket the vial and plant a smile before the hug. It felt warm. It felt sincere. It felt hollow.
They could do this. A quiet voice in the back of Brevity’s mind just worried what, exactly, they would have done.
18
HERO
Stories are as old as us. No one culture holds claim to the creation of the first stories. The origin of stories has often been attributed to something divine—gods, the Fates. The Greeks and their muses, though, that’s something more fickle. Muses aren’t divine, or necessarily benevolent. Their purpose, their gods, are the stories. Anything is justifiable, anything is expendable, in service to that.
Librarian Gregor Henry, 1977 CE
THEY FOUND IAMBE LOUNGING with a lyre one hallway over from the stairs that led to the library. She plucked at the strings less like she was playing music and more like they’d offended her. When they asked after the muses, her laughter was bright and vicious.
“You wouldn’t want to step foot in the home of the muses,” she said after she’d recovered herself.
“Why not?” asked Rami.
“Muses don’t have a home; they have a well. A well of possibilities.” Iambe’s gaze darted to Hero. Her eyes were cruel and delighted. “Your sweet little book wouldn’t be quite himself.”
“This isn’t my first after-realm trip. I can take it.” Hero crossed his arms.
Iambe just looked amused. “They would eat you alive, little hero.”
“Be that as it may,” Rami cut in before Hero could think of a witty comeback. “We have questions to which we need answers. Surely there is a way to gain an audience with one of their number?”
Hero still didn’t know what he’d done to earn Iambe’s disdain, but evidently it stopped at irritating scruffy angels in overcoats. She tilted her head, then gave a graceful shrug. “You can go to their little wishing well and make a wish, if you like. If Mother’s thimble of madness wasn’t enough, I suppose you can drown in it.” She rose and began to walk through the columns and into the sunlight. Alecto the lioness padded after her, pausing just long enough to stretch and give a very feline glare at Hero before following.
Rami’s brow knit in a question, but Hero just shrugged his shoulder. “In my experience, this job is ninety percent following or waiting for inscrutable women.”
Rami nodded as they set off in Iambe’s wake. “What’s the other ten percent?”
“Oh, blind terror mostly.”
* * *
* * *
THE SUN WAS NO lower in the sky when they followed Iambe outside, along a large promenade. Plump white pillars cast long rivers of shadows across the stone. Alecto let out a low growl as they reached the end and began to descend into a garden. The large cat sat down as if offended, obviously disdaining to go any farther.
“What’s her problem?” Hero asked.
Iambe shrugged as she stepped over the cat’s tail swishing with vexation. “The Furies do not care for muse territory.”
Hero was not too proud to taunt a murder cat, especially one that had been menacing him since he landed. He’d be glad to be rid of the pet. He formed his mouth into a pitying moue. “Afraid, kitten?”
In response, the cat took a lightning-fast swipe at the back of his hand. Pain bloomed, and Hero cursed and stepped back, cradling his hand.
“Are you all right?” Rami asked.
“Do stop taunting the Furies.” Boredom laced Iambe’s voice as she gestured. “This way.”
The cat had taken a sharp rake of skin off the back of his hand. Hero dabbed the bleeding ink off with the hem of his coat. “May you host the most heroic of fleas, beast.”
Alecto didn’t even have the grace to look ill-tempered. She gave him a slow, content blink and relaxed into a sprawl in the spot of sunshine.
“Hurry up,” Iambe called before passing through a curtain of diaphanous fabrics that diffused the light of the gardens beyond. Hero gave one last reproachful glance at the cat, wondering what would shy off a literal living avatar of anger. Alecto gave away nothing else. Rami followed him out, and Hero just caught the edge of the swaying curtain before stepping into the light.
“Oh, I’m going to be ill,” Hero moaned under his breath. He stopped short enough to cause Rami to collide with him. It must have carried in his voice, because Rami grunted and rubbed sympathetic circles on Hero’s back.
When Iambe had described a well, Hero had assumed a tidy cistern, or at worst a looking pond, as Echo had used. But the marble steps led down into a terrace transformed. There was no well, or cultured pond—the terrace was the pond. Water surrounded them on all sides, as if they’d stepped into a bathysphere of mirrors. At least, Hero had to presume it was water. The substance was perfectly clear, like liquid light, and appeared simultaneously thin as a soap bubble and deep as the ocean. It went on to forever and to naught. And when Hero tried to focus his eyes to make sense of it, he found himself staring at countless reflections. He took a step across the marble, and a thousand similar Heroes took a step at a half-second delay. Rami’s arm moved at his back, and a repeating visual echo of Ramiels followed suit. Each movement sent his brain into riot trying to make sense of it.
Hero squeezed his eyes closed as vertigo threatened to upend his stomach. “No one . . . move.” He focused on swallowing—very carefully. “If you please.”
Iambe’s sandals clicked on the marble, and though he had his eyes closed it was as if Hero could feel the reflections. “I did warn you.”
“And your guidance is appreciated, spirit.” Ramiel managed to sound mild and unaffected. His voice was a low, stabilizing presence, as sturdy as the hand at Hero’s back. “But we came to speak to the muses.”
“And here you are, master angel.” Iambe swept one arm—dear gods, how did Hero know that; his eyes were closed but he could feel the motion against his skin; this place was horror—and laughed mirthle
ssly. “The well of the muses. It’s where our realm brushes against their realm and we can hold congress. It’ll be up to you to catch their attention.”
With that, Iambe appeared done with them. Hero opened his eyes just in time to see her walk briskly to the surface of the water surrounding them and disappear in the slender space between two reflections.
“I can’t say she was eminently helpful, but at least we’re here.”
“You’ve been here before?” Hero asked. It was a reasonable question. Rami might have been a newcomer to the Library’s fractious staff, but he was also a fallen angel, ageless in ways that Hero didn’t care to think about. He talked about the Fall of Lucifer as if it had happened last Tuesday.
So it surprised him when Rami shook his head regretfully. “I was long fallen by the time the muses rose to prominence. And while we were not exactly forbidden from it by the Creator or Morningstar, visiting other realms was . . . discouraged.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d give much care to what Lucifer condoned,” Hero said, though every curious nerve in his body wanted to ask about the other one, the Creator. The maker of angels had seemed a contentious point between Ramiel and Uriel, his Heavenly colleague that had tried to invade the Library, leading Rami to stand against her. Hero didn’t believe for a minute that there was a singular creator—too many seemingly contradictory realms rose, coexisted, and fell based on the fancies of humans—but anything that had won the devotion of such a rare creature as Rami had a certain amount of fascination for Hero.
But Ramiel was strangely silent on the topic, at least with him. Hero had become adept at, by turns, charming or antagonizing information from people, but whenever the subject of Heaven’s god came up, the only thing he could draw from Rami was a distant look of loss. For some damned reason that look on Rami’s face always made Hero’s stomach hurt, so he had stopped prodding.
Lucifer, however, was different. Rami was always happy to mutter about Hell’s erstwhile leader. Rami puckered his lips as if he’d tasted something foul. “I don’t care a whit for the Deceiver. But if I had any hope of receiving forgiveness from Heaven, I judged it best not to exhibit an interest in realms other than Heaven and Earth.” He looked around him. “So this is new, all these reflections of us and—oh.”
Rami’s voice did a missed-stair kind of lurch. Hero followed his gaze, but at first all he could see was what he’d seen before—hundreds of mirror images. Upon focusing, however, he realized that an identical “mirror” wasn’t quite accurate. To his right, he and Rami appeared in the glass surface of the water much the same, but Hero had his arm in a sling. In the image just below that, Hero appeared to have a dagger held to Rami’s ribs, as if he’d brought him here by force. In a distant, tiny reflection behind that, Hero wasn’t there at all and it was Brevity staring back at him. Each mirror iteration bore a difference. Some were slight—Hero’s scar was gone; his coat was a different color—and others were great. He caught a glimpse of a tiny reflection, almost translucent with its not-thereness, where neither Hero nor Rami appeared but the well was polluted with smoke.
“What trickery is this?” Rami wondered uneasily, but Hero grasped it in an instant.
“Possibilities. It’s a well of possibilities, every alternate possible way this moment could have gone.” Hero caught a glimpse of another reflection where neither of them was present, but a familiar figure in a gentleman’s clothes and a gentleman’s malevolence stared back at him. The image rippled, disappearing quickly, but not before Hero could shudder at the victory in Andras’s demon gold eyes.
Every possible way the story could have gone was here. If Rami had refused to accompany Hero, if Hero had never returned to the Library, if Andras had succeeded in his coup. Since he was a character, the book part of his nature made him keenly aware of how every story could turn on the knife-edge of any decision. But standing in a bubble, separated from all his other fates by a mere slip of time, he was terrified by the fragility of it. Reality took on an unstable quality, soap-film thin and ready to burst.
“Remarkable.” Rami swiveled his head around as if the impermanence of their own existence was not about to fall down on their damned heads. The angel shook his head in wonder. “If this is just a touch of the muses’ realm, then surely they’ll have the answers we need.”
“Yes. Confidence. That is exactly what I draw from this too,” Hero said blandly. He straightened his shoulders, not quite able to shrug off the sense of unreality, but he could make a good show of it. “We’ll need to gain an audience. I’m not fond of the idea of being trapped here or wandering into the wrong reflection.”
“Iambe said we would need to attract the muses’ attention.”
“And this is why you were clever enough to bring me,” Hero said. The smile he flashed was perfect and perfectly fake. “Attention is my specialty.”
Claire would have frowned, Brevity would have laughed, but all Hero received from Rami was a thoughtful nod. How infuriating. “Good point. Your charisma is an asset here, no doubt.”
Well, maybe not entirely infuriating. Hero blinked, trying to realign his world around an unexpected compliment. It was a feeling he was not accustomed to, especially from earnestly serious men like Ramiel. “Yes, well—”
“What do you propose?”
Hero scrutinized the question for cynicism, for mockery, but found nothing. Rami patiently waited for his lead. Him! Hero was more accustomed to having to wrest control of a situation out of other people’s grasps with trickery and guile. He abruptly strode toward the bubble surface, hoping that would cool the warmth in his face.
His reflection approached him in turn. This Hero was very similar to him, lip curled and cocksure. Behind the mirror-Hero, Rami’s reflection kept watch with a soft expression on his face. As if that version of their working relationship had the opportunity to be based on more than the resentful, grudging necessity of acquaintances.
Hero didn’t have the courage to glance over his shoulder to see if that reflection rang true. It would bother him if it didn’t, and then it would bother him that it bothered him. Instead, Hero withdrew his book from where he’d carried it—miraculously unshredded so far—in his vest pocket. He flipped to the first page—blank, of course, but that would do for this purpose—and began to recite out loud. “Once upon a time . . .”
He expected a snicker, at least a skeptical comment from Rami, but his audience remained quiet. Hero cleared his throat and began again. “Once upon a time, there was a rather devastatingly handsome prince who, through entirely no fault of his own, was trapped in a high, high tower by a horrible, misguided sorceress with an atrocious tea habit and questionable fashion taste.”
Rami made a stifled sound that interrupted him—which was good because Hero really wasn’t sure what should happen next. “The reflections,” Rami said in a whisper.
Hero risked a glance from his book. The mirror-Hero in front of him hadn’t moved, but there had been a slight shift in his neighbors. Each copy of Hero and Rami trapped in the surface of the bubble had turned to stare, intently, in Hero’s direction. The weight was unnerving, but Hero scrounged for more. “The prince, in addition to being devastatingly handsome and gifted, knew his kingdom needed him. So, one day he was horribly clever and escaped the tower without alerting the willful sorceress.”
“Keep going,” Rami murmured. Hero felt movement in the reflections, but he knew better than to look. He screwed his eyes closed in thought. “His quest to save his kingdom took him to a dangerous faerie realm known as Seattle, the denizens of which were too scruffy and its weather far too damp for the likes of his pages—er, delicate skin. There he met the lady of the lake, a fair goddess who the prince believed could save him from the sorceress’s evil spell. But the lady had been . . .” Despite himself, Hero paused, frowning to himself as he tried to pick a word. “. . . she’d been ensorcelled by the realm and forgotten her
power. So corrupted was she that she rejected our prince, drove a dagger through his heart when all he was guilty of was being entirely too charming and clever. Then the cruel sorceress, more of a witch really—”
“Hero,” Rami interrupted.
“Shush, Claire will never hear this. It’s fine. I’m almost—”
“No, Hero. Look.”
His eyes snapped open in time to catch a blur of movement over the surface of the bubble. The reflected pairs were moving, swirling around the mirror-Hero in front of him like water down a drain. The movement threatened to make Hero ill, but one by one, the Hero and Rami clones shivered into a single pair.
Hero forgot his tale and studied the reflection in front of him. This Hero was certainly tidier than his current state. Familiar copper hair was trim and clean, and this Hero’s coat was not sliced by lioness claws. But the biggest change was in the alien differences of his face. This Hero’s eyes were soft, muddled somewhere between regret and pity. His cheek was smooth and devoid of scar tissue. This Hero had not been tortured by Andras for trying to defend the Library. This Hero likely didn’t trick himself into smelling smoke, hearing the tearing of pages in a silent room. Hero rubbed his own jaw, and the raw ridge of flaws was almost reassuring.
In the bubble’s mirror surface, Rami approached. He had a worried look, but then, Rami usually defaulted to some somber version of concerned. The angel reached out in the mirror, and Hero almost flinched until no pressure came on his own shoulder and he realized it was only mirror-Ramiel’s action, not his angel’s.
His angel, Hero quickly decided, was a problematic thought he would stow away for later.
The Ramiel in the mirror gestured, saying words to the other that Hero couldn’t hear. A worried look, soft edged and fleeting, passed between the two before they looked back, over their shoulders, into the distance of the reflection. Hero saw nothing at first.