by Pearl North
The Great Hall was silent. Presumably the Libyrarians, who knew The Book of the Night was a fake, were just as stunned by the scope of her fabrication as the Singers were shocked by its content.
“The sudden appearance of a tiger is arresting in any environment,” said a book.
Haly met Selene’s gaze, her mistress desperately searching her face, trying to determine what she was about. Next to her, Censor Orrin frowned deeply. “Skip to where he talks about the Eggs,” he whispered.
Haly’s already rapid pulse sped up even more. Skip to the part about the Eggs. She couldn’t do that, and Selene knew it. Haly looked at her mistress, pleading silently for her to have a plan. Anything. Selene blinked once, then looked to a woman among the kitchen folk who was unfamiliar to Haly. She was tall and broad, with a red kerchief tied about her head. It seemed unlikely she was a new addition to the staff. Was she one of Selene’s women?
Selene’s nod was nearly imperceptible, but Haly saw the woman acknowledge it, and slowly lift her hand to adjust her kerchief.
It must have been a signal. From the balcony behind Haly there came a loud bang, like a heavy piece of metal striking stone. With a cry, Orrin twisted and fell. There was a red hole in his temple, and more blood flowed out from the other side of his head, pooling on the marble floor. All the Libyrarians had turned to the shelves the moment the sound was heard, and now they turned around again, holding rifles. People dressed in white ran along the balcony, also carrying rifles.
More sharp, loud bangs sounded as the Libyrarians opened fire upon the Singers. People screamed and ran. Groil and Yabir, two men who had been with Michander when he came to the vault, fell under the hail of bullets, and others were wounded.
The Chorus of Memorizers, unarmed, turned and ran for the front gate, but they were blocked by the Libyrinth servants, who met them with frying pans, pitchforks, and fists. Haly saw Sakal laying about with his cooking spit. Hephaestus wrenched it from his grasp and dealt Sakal a staggering blow to the side of his head.
By now, the soldiers were firing back at the Libyrarians. The sound was deafening. Haly saw Frise fall because of a shot to her chest, and beside her, Breal dropped his weapon and knelt at her side. An instant later, a bullet struck him in the neck and he fell on top of her.
“S-stop it,” said Haly, but her voice was no more than a whisper. She was shaking. “Stop it!” she shouted, but her voice couldn’t be heard over the screams and the gunfire. She turned to Selene and Siblea. She grabbed both of them by the arms. “Tell them to stop it!”
They both looked at her, and then each tried to push her down and cover her at the same time. “Leave her alone!” shouted Selene.
“I’m trying to save her life, you ignorant lit!” he yelled back.
Haly twisted free of both of them and crouched beside the console. She scanned the Great Hall for Gyneth, and could not see him, but everywhere she looked, people were killing and dying. From the balcony, figures in white fired down upon the Singer soldiers with weapons that shot blue arcs of fire. Who were those people?
At the main gate the memorizers were trying to get past the Libyrinth servants to open the doors, but were being repelled.
“The doors! We have to take the doors!” Michander shouted to his men. “Golray, you and your tenors cover the rest of us.” They did, firing at the people on the balcony as the others advanced on the Libyrarians. The soldiers were outnumbered, but they were more experienced fighters. In the vanguard, Michander swung his mind lancet and people scattered.
“Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands,” added the same book.
Finally Haly spotted Gyneth near the palanquin, retrieving a rifle from a fallen soldier. Thale reached for the soldier’s mind lancet and then fell back as he was shot. He clutched at his belly, red blood streaming around his hands as he sank to the floor. She saw Gyneth’s mouth move as he watched his friend fall, but she couldn’t hear what he said in the din of gunfire and screaming. Gyneth raised the rifle and aimed it at Selene, who was still wrestling with Siblea and spitting epithets at him.
“Get down!” Haly screamed. She leaped up, pushed Selene to the floor, and then fell on top of her. Beside them, Siblea muttered a curse and attempted to shield Haly with his own body.
Near as she could tell, Gyneth missed all three of them. Beneath her, Selene grunted and then gasped as she saw Siblea draped over Haly’s back. “Get off of her!” she shouted, scrabbling for the knife at her belt.
“It’s okay,” said Haly. “He’s just trying to keep me from getting shot.”
But the sounds of fighting had stopped. Siblea got off her, brushing off his robes. Haly and Selene untangled themselves from each other and Selene immediately drew her knife and turned toward Siblea. Haly leaped between them. “No,” she said. “We may need him.”
Someone ran up and the three of them very nearly threw themselves on the floor again. It was the woman in the red kerchief. She lowered her rifle when she spotted Selene. “Your Grace, we have the survivors surrounded.” Though she spoke to Selene she kept a watchful eye on Siblea.
Siblea gave a deep sigh. “It would seem you have won, for now,” he observed.
It was quiet but for some sporadic moaning and crying. Black-clad bodies lay scattered on the floor of the Great Hall. In most cases it was impossible to tell which were Libyrarians and which Singers, but Haly did spot Michander on his back five feet from the console, his empty blue eyes fixed on the dome above.
“What is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker?” asked a book.
Selene reluctantly resheathed her knife and took Haly by the shoulders, holding her at arm’s length and scanning her anxiously. “Are you all right?” she asked, lifting one hand to trace a finger along the scar on Haly’s cheek.
Haly blinked and shifted away from the touch. “I’m fine. Selene, who are all those people in white? Where did the Libyrarians get all these rifles? And where’s Clauda? Is she okay?”
“Clauda is in Ilysies. The women in white are Ilysian soldiers. I brought the rifles along with the soldiers.” Selene still stared at Haly, her jaw working. Suddenly she pulled her into a fierce hug that forced the breath from Haly’s lungs. “We were always trying to get you back,” said Selene. “You have to know that.”
Tears threatened to overwhelm Haly. She tucked her face into Selene’s shoulder and breathed in the comforting, familiar smell of wool, sweat, and old paper. In spite of everything that had happened and would happen, she was home again. Haly would have liked to stay wrapped in those arms forever, encircled, protected, safe. But it was an illusion. None of them was safe.
The Ilysians and the Libyrarians had herded the remaining Singers into a tight knot midway between the console and the main gate and now stood around them in a ring, their rifles at the ready. There were no more than twenty Singers left standing. “What do you wish done with the survivors, Your Grace?” asked the woman in the red kerchief.
Haly looked to Selene. “Tell her to keep them under guard,” said Haly, afraid Selene might order them to be executed.
“How? Where will we keep them?” Selene scanned the Great Hall, doing her own tally of the dead.
Haly had not yet spotted Gyneth, but she had spotted Jan among the Libyrarians on guard. Her gaze fell on the palanquin, which was still standing. It would be very tight quarters indeed, but they’d be alive, at least, and it would be easy to guard them there. “Put them in the palanquin,” she said.
“That cage?” said Selene. “Is that what they kept you in?”
“It’s a palanquin,” said Haly. “It went on top of an elephant.”
“It looks like a cage.”
Haly stared at Selene. Suddenly she wanted to smack the look of pity right off her face. She didn’t want Selene’s pity or protection or righteous anger. She’d done just fine up to now not thinking about certain things, and right now there were much more important things to think about than scars and ca
ges. “Then use it,” she said.
Selene blinked, and then looked at the woman in the red kerchief and nodded.
The Singers, though vastly outnumbered, had put up a fierce struggle. Ten Libyrarians were dead, among them Frise and Breal. The servants had fared somewhat better—six of them had died, including Sakal. Twenty or more folk of the Libyrinth were wounded, some mortally. No Ilysians were killed, but three were wounded. Of the Chorus of Memorizers, only two had survived. Ten of Michander’s soldiers still lived, though two of them were not expected to see another sunrise. And of Subaltern Chorus Five nine remained, including Gyneth.
The combined smells of blood, gunpowder, and electricity coated the back of Haly’s throat as she made her way to the palanquin, which was now packed with Singers. Her clothes chest sat a little distance from it, having been moved to make room for the prisoners. It looked odd and forlorn, sitting there amid the wreckage of the battle. She should carry it upstairs to Selene’s room, but the mundane task seemed irrelevant now.
The Singers had been given water and bread, but there was no other comfort for them. There wasn’t even room for them to sit down. She had ordered this, but it was either this or let them be executed. It’s only temporary, she told herself as she scanned the haunted, anxious faces on the other side of the bars. “Gyneth?”
“He’s over here,” said a voice from the other side of the cage. Haly walked around, and inside the cage bodies shifted until Gyneth stood there at the bars, looking at her with hollow eyes. His hands were covered in blood from Thale, who had died from his wound before the battle ended. But Gyneth himself was unharmed. No, not true, she thought, taking in his blank expression, with just the faintest hint of dull anger at the bottom of his dark eyes. He would never again be that boy who had danced in the firelight. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came.
“Are we Redeemed, Holy One?” he asked hoarsely.
She shook her head, deciding in that moment that she would bring about a redemption, for all of them—Singer and Libyrarian both. Somehow. The nascent idea that had been forming in the back of her mind kicked again, and she began to see how there might be a way. She put her hands through the bars and grabbed Gyneth’s arms. He flinched, but she hung on anyway. “Not yet,” she said. “But we will be.”
Siblea’s Redemption
Selene, you must order your soldiers to execute the rest of the Eradicants immediately,” said Griome. Even with the flames of anger in his sunken brown cheeks, he looked like he had aged ten years since Haly had left home. He’d lost a lot of weight to sorrow or illness or both, and as he stood beside Peliac at the hearth in his tower office, he gripped the younger Libyrarian’s arm with a trembling hand. The room smelled of wood smoke and ink, and it was overly warm from the fire blazing in the hearth.
“The rest of the Eradicants?” Selene barked with open laughter. “Have you looked outside the window, Head Libyrarian?”
Haly shifted uncomfortably. Selene was right, of course, but it was strange to see this man she had feared all her life mocked by a junior Libyrarian.
“ ‘Fortune repays an ungrateful tyrant’s oppressive ways with the just punishment he duly deserves,’ ” said a book on Griome’s desk.
Beside Griome, Peliac tightened her jaw and said, “If we are doomed, we must take as many of them with us as we can.” She focused the full power of her glare upon Haly, and she remembered she’d been afraid of Peliac, too. “What are you doing here? This is none of your concern. Why don’t you go help Arche with the wounded?”
And leave her and Selene, and to a lesser extent, Griome, to make the decisions.
Ever since talking to Gyneth after the battle, an idea had been forming in Haly’s mind. She had just about all of it now, if only she could get them to listen to her. Haly struggled to find her voice. “I’m staying,” she said. “I—”
She was about to say, I have an idea how we can all get out of this, but Selene put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, saying, “She’s my clerk. It’s not for you to order her about.”
Peliac narrowed her eyes, taking a closer look at both of them. Her long face was deeply lined with bitterness and exhaustion, her black robes torn and stained with blood. “I suppose we can use her as a messenger. They will not harm her, I think. We’ll keep their censor alive and she can tell whoever is in charge out there that Siblea will die if they attack us. But is it enough leverage?” She looked at Griome, who stared at the flames in the fireplace and did not answer.
“It is enough to stall them,” said Selene. “And I am expecting reinforcements from Ilysies. But we can find someone else to take the message. She’s been through enough.”
Peliac sneered at her. “You’ve been expecting reinforcements from Ilysies ever since you got here! They’re not coming! You know it very well. Your mother has betrayed you and left you out for the buzzards.”
Selene nodded her head, glaring at Peliac, her face stiff and pale. “But I have not relied on my mother. Our own Clauda is a great weaver of webs. She will find a way.”
“Clauda?” said Haly and Peliac in unison. Haly extricated herself from Selene’s arm and turned to face her.
Selene looked at her and nodded, a smile warming her face. “Did you know how smart she is?”
“All persons are doomed to be in love once in their lives,” said a book on the shelf behind Griome’s desk.
Haly blinked. “Oh that, yeah. Yeah, she’s very smart.”
“The pot girl? Our survival hinges on the pot girl?” Peliac gave a bitter laugh. “Then we have nothing to worry about,” she said sarcastically. Peliac grabbed a decanter and glass from the mantelpiece and poured herself a generous portion of brandy, which she downed in one gulp. “Let’s start celebrating, by all means,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. She offered the bottle to Selene, her eyebrows raised in question.
Selene shook her head, her cheeks flushed. “As long as she’s out there, being Clauda, I’m not ready to give up.”
Peliac put the decanter back on the tray. “Then while you are waiting for the exalted ladle to pour blessings upon us all, pray have your soldiers finish at least part of the job!” she hissed.
“Make up your mind. Do you want them dead, or do you want bargaining chips?” yelled Selene.
“One will suffice,” said Peliac. “Siblea. The rest—”
“Stop!” Haly raised her voice, using the practice she’d had declaiming at Singers for the past several days. Peliac, Griome, and Selene stared at her in momentary silence and she took the opening. “There is a surer way. Give them the Redemption.”
Peliac sighed. “They’ve gotten to her. How sad. Have you ever read The International Handbook of Traumatic Stress Syndromes?” she asked Selene, who shook her head. “Interesting book. The author uses a term for people sympathizing with their own kidnappers. Stockholm syndrome, he calls it. Apparently it’s quite common.”
Concerned, Selene looked at Haly as if she thought it was true. She put a hand on Haly’s shoulder. “Perhaps you should rest. Why don’t you go to my chambers? I’ll have Jan bring you something to eat.”
“Isolation of patients who are suffering from a contagious disease,” said another book on Griome’s desk.
Frustration filled Haly. It was her turn to flaunt tradition. She could not contain the incredulous glare that shot from her eyes and actually made Selene take a step back. “Are you insane? There is a nation out there”—she pointed at the window—“waiting for a miracle. And if they don’t get their miracle, they’re going to use the Horn of Yammon to destroy the Libyrinth and call that their miracle. I say let’s give them the goat-fuck miracle!”
“She’s out of control,” Peliac murmured to Griome, but they both watched in fascination as Selene’s clerk dressed her down.
For her part Selene blinked and said, “What are you talking about?”
“We have the highest surviving member of the Singer hierarchy downstairs locked in a bo
x, and we have their messiah, me. Yes,” she said, pausing for a moment for that to sink in. “They really think I’m the prophesied messiah, the Redeemer. If we can’t make a miracle to satisfy them with those ingredients, we don’t deserve to survive. We’re going to bring Siblea up on top of the battlements, and he’s going to announce the Redemption, and then I’m going to tell them that the Word is united with the Song, and in proof of this, I will be choosing novitiates for the Chorus of the Word. We’ll take a few at a time, bring them inside and teach them to read, then they’ll go out and teach others.”
“This is madness,” blurted Peliac. “Selene, don’t listen to the poor girl. Even if it weren’t for the fact that there are too many of them, they are illiterate rabble.”
Griome at last roused himself. “The knowledge we of the Libyrinth have dedicated our lives to preserving is not for peasants and book burners,” he said. “Even if they can learn, they don’t want to learn, and even if they wanted to learn, they would not understand. They would take the first opportunity to destroy us and our sacred charge. Better we should all die than betray our trust.”
Siblea had been right. The Libyrarians did not want to share their knowledge. Haly wasn’t surprised. But how could she get them to accept what needed to be done? Maybe she didn’t have to. She took another look at Griome and Peliac. What were they going to do, glare her to death? She’d been through torture, for Tales’ sake. Neither of them was even remotely as scary as Ithaster with that little knife and jar.
Haly glanced at Selene. Selene controlled the soldiers downstairs, and Selene was listening. “You know, that is exactly the attitude that got us into this mess in the first place,” said Haly. “The Ancients did not permit their slaves to read. Then Iscarion refused to share The Book of the Night with Yammon. Throughout history, the literate have kept their knowledge from the illiterate. Is it any wonder the Singers regard us as a threat? But now we have a chance to make things right. Not all of the Singers are bent on destroying the written word. One of them, my friend Gyneth, has learned to read. And Censor Siblea is sympathetic to the books. Selene,” she said, putting her hand out. “It is the right thing, besides being our best chance for survival.”