The City of Silk and Steel

by Mike Carey

  The work that was available was menial at best, consisting mainly of the sweeping of floors and the refilling of inkwells in the library’s scriptorium, but the woman was more than satisfied with this. She was of a solitary nature, and often uncomfortable or embarrassed around other people. This natural reticence was made worse by the fact that she had been blessed with the gift of foreknowledge, the sight. She could not remain long in people’s company without her senses being assailed by the tangled webs of their past, and the myriad branching roads of their possible futures.

  In the company of books, by contrast, she felt a serenity which she could hardly describe: as though all the contradictory forces which she experienced when she was forced to interact with those around her reached a perfect and timeless equilibrium.

  She had come to the city of Bessa along with her mother, who had since died, leaving the young woman not quite destitute but certainly with few and straitened resources. So the work at the library was in many ways

  No, this won’t do at all. It doesn’t feel right.

  It’s so much harder to tell this story than the others. That’s ridiculous, I know it is, but the sense of solidity, of purpose and direction that I find in other people’s lives is gone in an instant when I contemplate my own. It feels as though I’m describing patterns of light in water, that change a hundred times in the space of a heartbeat.

  But let me draw breath, for a moment or two, and try again.

  The Tale of the Librarian of Bessa

  The library sometimes reminded Rem of a city deep underground. It was cool, hushed, lit by far distant skylights: a city of labyrinthine streets through which she moved in reverential silence, the sole human citizen, a city of towering shelves thronged with scrolls which leaned over her as she walked, watching her progress with infinite, aged patience.

  Now, she strode swiftly beneath their comforting gaze. Her gait, the way she carried herself, had changed since she first came to the library. She had arrived awkward and shuffling, dressed in the shabby grey garments of a sweeper boy. It was ten years since that day; now Rem wore the red sash and cap of the Third Librarian, and walked with an unassuming pride.

  She reached the end of a long avenue of shelves, turned right, and instantly came upon a prone figure on the floor. She had grown used to encountering the Second Librarian, Warid, stretched out and semi-comatose after a night of heavy drinking, in odd places in the library’s corridors and reading rooms. In earlier days she used to trip over him, earning an easily dodged swipe and a string of curses for her carelessness. She had soon learned, however, to check the path before her for his presence. Now she stepped neatly round him, giving him as wide a berth as she could manage. He gave a gentle groan as she walked past, and rolled over.

  He was a decent man really, aside from his gambling and drinking, and although he did no good to the library ostensibly under his care, at least he could not be said to do it any harm. On the whole, Rem had grown rather fond of him – he was a rare human companion in her world of parchment and stone and, more importantly, a wonderfully quiet one, making few demands on her conversational skills.

  And his incompetence was a blessing to her. Every duty in which he failed was one where she could succeed in his stead, every task he neglected one which she could fulfil. His complete lack of professional pride had delivered the entire library into her care. She was its custodian. Sometimes, even now, the joy of that thought would well up in her so strongly, she had to fight back the urge to laugh. Rem was a librarian, and the title fitted her perfectly, the knowledge of it becoming as intimate to her as her own name, her own skin.

  She continued past the Second Librarian, walking on until she came to a small, ornately carved wooden door. Here she gave a respectful knock, then entered without waiting for an answer – it was always a long time coming. The First Librarian hadn’t even noticed that she had come in. He was bent over his rare scrolls as usual, attempting to conquer his trembling hands long enough to patch their torn parchment. Rem coughed politely as she approached, and he looked up at her with his watery eyes folded in wrinkled skin. ‘Ah, Rem.’ He paused as if collecting his thoughts, but then slowly bent his head back to his work, seeming to forget her presence entirely.

  Rem coughed again, gently. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I see you have finished repairing the embossed and illuminated scrolls which arrived last month from Ard-al-Raqib. I’ve come for the key to the Rare Texts Room, to replace them there.’

  The First Librarian appeared to consider this pronouncement. ‘Mmmmm . . . You know, Rem, the Third Librarian is not supposed to have access to the Rare Texts Room. That sort of responsibility is a little above your station yet, I think . . . Good initiative, lad, very good, but I think this task falls to my son, rather than you. Still, still . . . I am glad you reminded me. You just run along and ask him to sort it out now, yes?’

  ‘Sir,’ Rem replied promptly, ‘it is your son who has just sent me to you with the order that I should retrieve the key and give it to him. He is at the market currently, considering the purchase of some new inks reputed to be uncommonly resistant to fading, but he would like to start moving the scrolls immediately on his return. You know,’ she added after a short hesitation, wondering if this was not going too far, ‘how dutiful the Second Librarian is in his work, and the pains he takes to complete everything in a timely fashion.’

  ‘Ah! Very well, very well. That’s commendable . . . splendid. Here is the key . . .’

  The old man reached hesitantly for a drawer in the front of his desk, and drew out a thin copper key with shaking fingers. Rem took it smoothly from his hands and, bowing slightly, turned and marched out.

  This kind of deception came naturally to her now; nothing would ever get done without it. It was the same when she travelled to Perdondaris and Gharia in search of new texts, acquisitive missions supposedly reserved for the Second Librarian alone.

  In other respects she lied by omission – neither of the other Librarians was aware that she was slowly putting the scrolls into alphabetical order by section. Nor did they know that many of her own stories and poetry now had a place in the library, their bright new parchment glowing conspicuously amongst the swathes of ancient, yellowed scrolls.

  They certainly did not know that Rem slept in the library every night. She had done this for the first time one night a few months after her mother died. She placed her bedroll at the end of a small cul-de-sac of shelves devoted to sacred texts. They surrounded her as she slept, a sensation she found oddly comforting.

  It was after this that it occurred to her that the library was a city, and she felt herself for the first time to be one of its true inhabitants. Scholars came and went. The First and Second Librarians arrived in the morning and departed in the evening to the small house they shared on the edge of Bessa. Only Rem wandered the library’s passageways at night, when the stillness was alive with the whispers of the scrolls as they rustled soft messages to one another in the dark.

  She stopped paying the rent on the room she used to share with her mother. She never slept there again. Increasingly, she noticed that after a trip to the market or the Jidur, where she went sometimes to listen to the debates, a subtle change would come over her on returning to the library. Her shoulders would relax, almost imperceptibly. She would release a breath she did not know she held, or feel a lightening in her step. She did not recognise this change at first; she had not experienced it since she was very young. Later on, much later, it came to her that it was a homecoming she felt, as she pushed open the great doors and slipped into the cool and quiet of the library once more. She felt as if she was coming back to a place where she absolutely, unquestioningly belonged.

  Lately, however, her homecomings had an urgency to them, each one heralded by a sweet and desperate relief. Returning to the library now, Rem felt that it was a sanctuary as well as a home, suddenly wonderful not only for itself, but for the protection it seemed to offer from the world outside it. That w
orld was changing in rapid and sinister ways.

  It had all begun a few months before with the appearance of a new speaker in the Jidur. His name was Hakkim Mehdad. The doctrine of Asceticism which he preached had never been particularly welcome in Bessa before, its inhabitants being too fond of their brothels and drinking houses to embrace any philosophy of abstinence. Bessan preachers tended to focus their attention on more exciting religions, ones that would be likely to draw a large following. The listeners in the Garden of Voices, however, would never embrace a creed on its own merits alone, valuing a convincing performance above all moralising and painstaking argument. The teachings declaimed in the Jidur soared and fell on the voices of their speakers. And, though it had never happened before, the odious doctrine of Asceticism was now placed in the mouth of one whose voice could kindle it into beauty.

  The evening she first saw Hakkim in the flesh, Rem was walking through the crowds of people gathered in the square on her way back to the library. She noticed as she passed a group of men dressed in long black robes, an unusual sight in Bessa at any time, and especially in the oppressive heat of summer. They were clustered around a tall, wiry man, also cloaked in black, who had just mounted the podium. They seemed to be his disciples, and were watching him with rapt attention. Those standing near them were eyeing the dark figures a little uneasily. At first, Rem barely registered any of this, perceiving Hakkim as merely another actor in the street theatre of the debates. Then he began to speak.

  ‘Consider the desert nihareem,’ he said. ‘These evil sprites confuse the weary traveller, turning him from his path with their bright lights at night. Deceived into thinking he has found a town or caravanserai, he strikes out towards these lights, only to lose himself utterly in the vast desert, to die of thirst or founder in quicksand.’

  The man’s voice rang out across the square. Although he did not shout, his words cut through the noise of the Jidur, making the sounds of both crowd and debaters alike appear a dull murmur by comparison. People started to pool around him, drifting away from the other speakers towards this compelling new presence.

  The unlucky preachers glared at Hakkim for depriving them of their audience, yet even they listened to him. They were drawn in by his utter conviction, bent around the blunt steel of his certainty, in spite of themselves. Words of refutation or attack died on their lips. Rem, too, was arrested by some indefinable quality in his tone. Passion was in his words like oil in a wick, saturating them with dormant fire.

  ‘These lights are beautiful. They are full of promise. Yet it is their very beauty which reveals their deception. It is their very promise which warns the wise to shun and fear them. So is it with the pleasures of this world. Wine, gambling, naked flesh, these are base desires, the lesser lights which blind us to our proper path. They are snares! Only by turning from their poisoned glow may we perceive unhindered the safe and uncorrupted path!’

  His voice dropped to a whisper. Heads craned towards him as he went on: ‘For there is another light, my friends. A greater, brighter, purer light, a hundred times lovelier than those lesser lights which entrap us. This is the light of the One Truth. This, and only this, is the light which will guide us to safety through the desert, the light which illuminates our proper way. So why, you may ask me, have you not seen this light? Why have you had no glimpse of its beauty? Why have you not basked in its transcending beam?’

  Now his eyes flashed sparks, and the flame caught. The fire sleeping in his voice woke to a roar.

  ‘Because you are lost in the desert! Because you are deceived by the nihareem! Abandon your drinking, leave your gambling halls, conquer your licentiousness and your lust! You are only turning aside from death. You are only spurning the temptations of demons! And when you have forsaken these things, think, only think, what you will gain in return . . .’

  Hakkim’s voice sank to an ecstatic murmur as he described the joys of his One Truth, and Rem glanced at the faces around her. Not everyone in the crowd, transfixed as they were, was reacting well to his words. She could see several people muttering uncertainly to one another, and not a few smirks and grimaces at the notion of conquering licentiousness and lust. It was nearing midday, the time when life in the hot city slowed to a crawl, and the square was shimmering in the summer heat. The sun stewed in the sky. It was one of those days when the heat boils and thickens in the air. It sapped people’s spirits, making them weak and tired and angry. To Rem’s right, a plain-looking man with sweat patches under his arms shouted, ‘Why not leave off eating and drinking as well, and have an end to it? Won’t be any future for humanity anyway, since we’re forbidden to procreate.’

  The audience had swelled by this time to such a size that when it happened, the people standing at the front had no idea. Insulated by a growing cushion of onlookers, they were aware of nothing more than a slight stir in the crowd, an intensification in the background noise which always filled the Jidur.

  Hakkim’s voice ran on, sinuous and smooth, now a sensuous whisper, now a bright clarion call, as his disciples oozed like tar through the crowd, congealed around the man at Rem’s side – not quickly enough to startle him – and then closed in. The whole thing seemed melted by the heat into a warped dream: their movement, a viscous fluidity, the man’s face waking into slow surprise, the grunts of his pain.

  Rem watched them beating him, too horrified to cry out. A sickening sense of helplessness overwhelmed her. She stood shackled to the spot until the dark figures turned and stalked off, leaving the bloodied man curled in a broken ball on the ground. People around her started to shout and point; some men considered giving chase, but checked themselves and hung back, or went instead to fetch a doctor for the man, who had begun to groan and stir. The Ascetics left the Jidur unchallenged, in the same silence in which they had conducted their attack. And through it all, like music, Hakkim’s voice flowed. His tone now was one of profound and terrible pity, as if he would wrap his listeners in his arms.

  ‘Oh, my brothers! Oh, my friends! How I wish that you could see the light of the Truth as I have seen it! It would transform you!’ Rem ran from the square in disgust.

  She wanted to forget it, to dismiss the entire incident from her mind as an aberration, never to be repeated. But something had broken that day in the Jidur. Not the hoped-for storm, come to lance the boil of summer, but some foul, rotten thing, grown fat on darkness and secrecy. Its belly had been slit, and now the contagion was pouring out. At first she saw the black-robed figures only with the inner eye of foresight, but soon they were seeping through the streets of Bessa like ink spilled across parchment.

  They were mostly young men, the sons of butchers and weavers who had always felt destined for greater things than a career in their father’s shop. They drank Hakkim’s words, sneaked to the Jidur against their parents’ wishes, and began refusing wine at dinner, rising long before the rest of their household to sit in silent meditation.

  A little oddness in a growing boy was to be expected. Youth came with confusion and frustration – such things were natural, and would find an outlet, sometimes in a drunken brawl, sometimes in a little religious eccentricity. But Hakkim was a prophet. He looked at a thousand separate wellsprings of uncertainty and rage and saw a river in potentia. All it lacked was a direction in which to flow. Asceticism had no god, yet in its name Hakkim performed miracles, bringing a new nation out of the midst of another nation: a young nation, dressed in black, united by a single purpose.

  The purpose was blood. The Ascetics shunned the pleasures of the world, but hounded those who lived by them. Gambling halls were torched and inns attacked, their customers pelted with stones. Dancing girls were followed on their way home from work. Soon, no woman dared to walk alone after nightfall with her arms and head uncovered. It was said that Bokhari Al-Bokhari had doubled the guard around his own harem. A publican was found hanged from the sign outside his establishment. Men and women who lay with others of their own sex were also targeted. The Ascetics pract
ised strict abstinence, and considered all sexual practices apart from those conducted between husband and wife to be sinful and abhorrent.

  When the attacks started, groups of women would congregate on their way to the market, gossiping in hushed, fearful tones about the latest atrocity. Then the Ascetics began to patrol the city by day, walking in groups of three or four and pausing to listen in to conversations. Suddenly, no one talked in the streets any more.

  They were not loutish; the violence of the Ascetics was silent and whisper-swift, begun with the noise of soft footsteps at the top of some narrow street, and ended with the discreet swish of a blade wiped clean on a fold of dark cloth. It was this silence, this imperturbable silence, that Rem found most chilling about them. She had lived with silence for most of her life, but this was different. Her silence, the silence she loved, hummed with mute voices; it was the silence at the end of a song, the silence of lovers in the moments just before and just after coupling. The Ascetics were silent in the way of dead things, and Rem felt this and recoiled from it in dread.

  The fear that filled Bessa had even permeated the thick stone walls of her library, usually so reassuringly cut off from the city and its problems. The First Librarian came out more and more often from his office and tottered around anxiously at odd moments, looking for his son. Several times now Rem had been forced to drag the Second Librarian into the Rare Texts Room to hide him from his father, meeting the First Librarian with an excuse about a purchase at the market, or an unexpected meeting with one of the sultan’s legates. The First Librarian was well-wadded with delusions, but even he was not quite so oblivious that he had no inkling of the real reasons behind Warid’s long absences from the library, and the fact that Rem did most of his work.

  Deep down, in some dark, shameful little chamber of his mind such as is reserved by cuckolds for the knowledge of their wives’ exploits, he knew that Warid had a certain reputation. He had managed to ignore it up until now, but suddenly a certain reputation was a dangerous thing to have in Bessa, and the consciousness of encroaching threat had woken him to panicked activity. Every week now brought some story of an inveterate gambler beaten and left to bleed in the street, or a collapsed drunk gutted in his sleep, gashed throat gaping as if in terror at some dream from which he would never awake. So the First Librarian would search for his son, accept Rem’s lies with nervous acquiescence and, on those few occasions when he found Warid sober enough to talk, clasp him in trembling arms, tears leaking from the folds of skin around his eyes, and quaver vaguely, ‘You will be careful, won’t you, my boy? These are dangerous times, you know . . . dangerous times . . .’