by Simon Morden
“You and me both, Mr Thaler.” Morgenstern reclosed the bolts on the door. “I’ll go and get the book,” he said. “Go through to the kitchen.”
Morgenstern headed up the narrow stairs on unsteady legs, and Thaler was left to creak along the corridor to the back room.
“Miss Morgenstern,” said Thaler. He pulled back a chair from the long table and sat heavily.
“Mr Thaler,” said Sophia, without turning around. She had her hair tied back and uncovered, with floury splashes down her apron. “Do sit down.”
“I …” He’d done so already. “Thank you.”
Wielding a long-handled wooden paddle, she delved deep into an alcove next to the fire. Then she pulled the paddle back out and deposited a round loaf on the table in front of Thaler.
“Eaten, Mr Thaler?” She knocked the oven door closed with her elbow and stowed the paddle.
“Actually, no. I haven’t found the time.” He hadn’t, either. What with one thing and another.
Sophia tutted. “That’s not like you, Mr Thaler. You have to look after yourself. So, some cheese with your bread?” She wiped her hands on her apron. She had a small smudge of flour on her nose.
Disarmed, Thaler acquiesced. “That will be…”
“Acceptable?” She laid three platters on the table and slipped a board under the cooling loaf. Its crust, previously smooth and brown, had just started to shrink and crack. “I’m sure Father will join us shortly.”
The ceiling sounded with slow footsteps, and Sophia went into the larder to find the cheese and the butter.
Thaler looked at the low-burning fire, at the sparks rising up the chimney and out into the night.
Why did they do that? he wondered. Everything solid fell to the ground, but fire rose. Like the hexmasters and their levitation spells. Perhaps it was magic. Perhaps some types of wood were more magical than others.
Aaron Morgenstern shuffled into the room, and carefully laid the leather-bound book next to Thaler’s place-setting. “The Maimonides.”
The boards were rigid, unwarped and well cut, covered with a dark brown calfskin, tanned and stretched and nailed and tooled. He nodded with appreciation, then opened the book and ran a finger down the binding. Nice tight stitching. No loose leaves there. The frontispiece was clear and uncluttered, a Latin script with tightly controlled serifs.
“Good copy,” said Thaler. “Berber Spain?”
“I believe so. It’s no more than twenty years old, with very few corrections and marginalia.”
Thaler turned the first page of stiff, fibrous paper. “Ah ha.”
The text was interlinear Latin and Hebrew: he’d not seen that before. The Latin, Thaler could read, and his lips twitched as he muttered the opening syllables. Over the top, Morgenstern spoke the Hebrew, because he could understand both.
When they next looked up, Sophia was sitting opposite Thaler, a wedge of bread on her plate and a chunk of yellow cheese in her mouth. “What?”
“The blessing, child?” said Morgenstern. “Serving our guest first?”
“I swear I’d have starved to death before you two stopped.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and poured some watered wine from the pitcher into her cup. “Anyway, a reading from Rabbi Maimonides is blessing enough for a feast, let alone a simple supper.”
To prove the point, she dipped her bread and chewed the end of it off.
“My daughter behaves more like a goy every day.” Morgenstern threw his hands in the air. “Marriage. It’s the only thing that’ll be the saving of her.”
Sophia smiled and dunked her bread in her wine again. “Can I get you anything, Mr Thaler?”
Thaler looked to her father for a lead, but he just shrugged and muttered in Yiddish as he took his seat at the head of the table, where he could warm his bones with the heat from the grate.
“Well, some of everything, I suppose.”
Sophia dutifully cut a wedge of bread and leant across to place it on Thaler’s plate, then returned with the jug of wine.
“So, will you be relieving me of the Maimonides?” Morgenstern held out his own platter for Sophia to load.
“We have translations, but not a Hebrew text next to the Latin one. Copying should only take a couple of months. It’s not a huge book.”
“And you have someone who can write Hebrew?”
“Even if they don’t understand it, they can copy it.”
“These words. Are words.” Morgenstern trembled, and Sophia had to steady his hand. “Get one stroke wrong and you change the whole meaning. The text. Worthless.”
Thaler’s mouth sneaked a smile. “We have someone who can not only write Hebrew, they can read it.”
The old man snorted. “You shouldn’t joke about these things. It’s important to us, and it should be important to you.”
“I’m sorry.” Perhaps he should be slightly abashed. Certainly Sophia was frowning at him.
“Sorry enough to return the sefer you have?”
Thaler raised his hands. “I can’t do anything about that.”
“But when you’re the master librarian?” pressed Morgenstern.
“Not even then. They’re part of the collection, and the collection is less without them. Let’s not go round the square with this again.”
Morgenstern shook his head and adjusted his little black skull cap. He was wearing the one with the gold-thread edging. “Each one a lifetime’s work. Just sitting there. Not even being read,” he muttered. Thaler’s conscience was tweaked: he was sitting at the man’s table, eating his food and drinking his wine, and insulting his religion all at the same time. “We don’t have sacred texts,” he said.
“Would it kill you to respect those who did?”
“Father,” said Sophia, in a tone that brooked no argument.
“Yes, daughter mine.” He bit into his cheese and chewed thoughtfully.
“You’re our guest, Mr Thaler.” She refilled his cup. “Guests are always welcome in this house.”
“I …” said Thaler. “Look, I may never get to be master librarian. I’m not the oldest under-librarian. I’m not even the most senior, though that doesn’t mean everything – the librarians usually choose their own master. And there are precedents.”
“Don’t worry yourself about it, Mr Thaler. What’s done is done. More bread?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine.” He drank the wine though, and stared at its glassy surface, stained slightly with the oils from the cheese transferred to the liquid via his upper lip. “If you would just come into the library…”
“Jews don’t,” said Morgenstern. “Even this Jew won’t.”
“Now who’s being intransigent?”
“Gentlemen,” said Sophia, “neither of you are behaving well. I insist on harmony at my table.”
Old Morgenstern harrumphed. “Your table?”
“My bread, my cheese, my cooking, my going to market, my visiting the wine seller, my setting out, and undoubtedly, my cleaning up. So yes.” She leant back and stared defiantly at her father. “My table as much as it is yours.”
“Marriage.”
“No one will have me.” She looked quite pleased with herself.
“Is that any surprise? You make yourself unmarriable!”
“And who would look after you, you old fool? You’d spend all day wandering the house in your nightgown, wondering what time it was.” She reached out and patted his hand, which Morgenstern rightly interpreted as being entirely patronising. “When you’ve gone, then I shall marry.”
“If I thought you would marry, I’d go tomorrow.”
“Perhaps I should leave,” offered Thaler.
“He’s just in a bad mood, Mr Thaler. Do stay.” She smiled at him, but was looking at her father. “It’s so rare I get intelligent conversation.”
“And this from the mouth of my own flesh and blood? Oy.”
“Tell Mr Thaler what’s put you in a bad mood, Father.”
“Apart from him t
aking my books and holding three perfectly good sefer captive?”
“He’s only borrowing the Maimonides, and he’s made certain that every other book the library has borrowed has come back, in the same condition, and quickly. He even had one of them rebound for you. Mr Thaler is your friend, Father, though I don’t know why.” She folded her arms. “You’re an irascible old devil.”
Sophia was right: Morgenstern was upset, and not at him. He’d tried hiding it, and with someone less familiar he might have succeeded. But, while Thaler wouldn’t exactly describe the Jew as a friend, he was certainly an acquaintance of long standing.
“Come, Mr Morgenstern. If I’m not the object of your ire, what is? Is it something to do with your festival preparation?”
“What? Purim? No, no.” Morgenstern pushed his plate away. “Sophia told you about the Euclid, yes?”
“Yes. You received three books. Josephus – we have both War and Antiquities already, the Maimonides, and the Euclid.”
“I paid good money for the Euclid. On the Balance.”
Thaler slowly sat more upright. “Balance? But that’s…”
“Lost, yes.” Morgenstern tugged at his thin white beard. “Which might give you some idea just how much I paid for it.”
“Can I see it?” The librarian’s palms were suddenly sweaty.
“I don’t have it. They cheated me. Me, Aaron Morgenstern.” He threw his hands up in disgust. “I’ve dealt with these people for thirty years and they’ve never let me down. I send them this king’s ransom and I get some obscure Babylonian work no one’s ever heard of.”
“Who did you pay?” asked Thaler. Euclid. On the Balance. Gods, it was legendary! And no one had seen so much as a page from it for centuries. He wiped his hands on his gown and gripped the edge of the table.
“I can’t tell you. It’s a professional confidence.” He sighed. “I can’t even tell you if it was them who swindled me, or whether they genuinely sent it and it got switched in transit. All I know is I don’t have On the Balance.”
“Have you questioned the bargemaster?”
“Gone. Quickly, too. Downstream. If I find it was them, I’ll …” His anger slipped away, and Morgenstern seemed smaller and frailer than before. “I don’t know what I can do. I can complain, but who’s going to believe an old Jewish bookseller over a German bargemaster. I have receipts, a bill of sale, but no book.”
“Do you even know who the bargemaster was?”
“I don’t know his name,” said Sophia, “but if you give me a moment, I’ll remember the name of the boat.”
“Wien is the obvious place to sell a stolen book,” said Thaler. “I can get a message to the Protector’s officials. You still might get your Euclid.”
“And how will you get your message to them? Magic?”
“That’s the way we normally do things. I know you don’t like it, but…”
“Send a horse. Better still, send a man on a horse.”
“All the way to Wien? Your bargemaster will have been, gone, and your book, if it ever existed, will have vanished into thin air.” Thaler, having offered help, was irritated. And also: a previously lost Euclid? It was far too valuable to let it slip from his grasp – Morgenstern’s grasp – without a fight. “You use the barges to move your goods. I mean, even if you think those tattoos are for show, how do you explain how the boats move upstream?”
“How other people send their books to me is their business. How they want me to send them is also their business.” At least Morgenstern had the grace to look embarrassed.
“Then how I send a message to Wien is my business.” Thaler knew he’d won that particular bout, and he swigged the last of his wine. “I’ll go and do it now. An apprentice will call in the morning for the Maimonides, and I’ll let you know if the Euclid is found. He pushed his chair back. “Good night to you, Miss Morgenstern, and you, Mr Morgenstern.”
8
That Nikoleta could sense magic was a given: her first tattoo, since embellished and extended, allowed her to differentiate clearly between the enchanted and the mundane. That ability had nearly sent her mad. She was, after all, surrounded by sorcerers. She’d learnt painfully – there was no other way – to block out the roar in her head, so thoroughly that the only time in the last few years that it had proved inadequate was that very morning in the White Tower.
Now that she had cause to look at it again, in the quietness of her austere cell, it told her another story. She could still feel the magic around her, in her, and yet there was cause for real fear. She could now sense its absence elsewhere.
The knot in her chest tightened. The other adepts were confined to their cells by the master in charge, and she could tell from the auras around her where they were. But they were faint where they should have been vivid. They should have found her probing offensive and threatening. They should have retaliated.
That she was not under immediate assault from half a dozen furious adepts told her more than she wanted to know.
She waited. Waited for what, she didn’t know, but it was all she could do. She had neither permission nor reason to leave the adepts’ house: to do so without either would have been cause for severe punishment.
She heard footsteps. They were coming closer, and she shut down her magical senses completely. The adept master was stalking the cloisters. The pacing stopped outside her unlocked, unwarded door. Adepts were not permitted such luxuries as privacy and secrets.
She stood by the foot of her bed, as she’d been told to do countless times before. The door didn’t open, but a parchment note slid under it with a crisp hiss. The footsteps receded. She didn’t move for a few moments, making sure that the master wasn’t going to return, then walked to the door and scooped up the letter.
It was novices who were used to pass messages on from mundanes, not masters. Which meant that the novices were confined to their quarters, too. She closed her fist on the stiff paper.
Then she opened her hand and smoothed the parchment flat. She looked at the letter. The wax seal was a library mark, with the Latin letters B and I prominent on opposite pages of an open book. That was how mundanes sealed their writing against tampering. It was little more than pathetic.
She almost destroyed the note. Instead, she opened it and read:
Felicitous greetings from Under-librarian Frederik Thaler in the name of Prince Gerhard V of Juvavum in the Palatinate of Carinthia, by the authority of the Master Librarian, to the Masters of Goat Mountain. By royal agreement and past custom, I require the following information to be transmitted with all due haste to the Protector of Wien. A Juvavum bookseller recently had the opportunity to acquire a previously unobtainable work, On the Balance by Euclid, but has been cheated. The library is determined to regain this invaluable book if at all possible – suspicion has fallen on the bargemaster and crew of the Donau Bride, which left Juvavum this morning, believed heading to Wien.
The Protector’s men are requested to seize the barge and search it, before there is an opportunity to dispose of the book within Wien. I am authorised to offer a reward of one hundred shillings for information leading to the return of the book, and our prince’s brother Protector Waldemar is assured of his goodwill and favour.
Written and signed this day, the fourteenth day of March in the fifteenth year of the reign of Gerhard V of Juvavum, Under-librarian Frederik Thaler.
It was perfectly reasonable. This Thaler was expecting nothing more than his due – invoking the name of the prince – to have a message sent to Wien. It would take no more effort than Thaler had taken to write his absurdly wordy letter for her to go to the projection room and transmit their contents near or far. It was a common transaction.
Except there now seemed to be a problem, and no one was telling her what it was. She would have to find out for herself.
Nikoleta took her courage and the letter in her hands, and stepped out into the cloister.
There was no rule requiring her to cover herself, but
she felt the overwhelming need to do so, so she did. She felt safer, which was stupid because it was only a bit of cloth: she had a full repertoire of defensive and offensive spells, but she distrusted them to protect her from whatever was wrong.
She didn’t run though, or walk quickly, to the projector. Decorum and order were nothing more than theatre, but she’d grown up in a city where the show of power was more impressive than the power itself. She understood such things and how effective they could be.
She walked along two sides of the cloister square. It was late, and the air spilling down from the mountains was cold. A fog was rising off the river and the lights of the adepts’ house were haloed with mist. Because of the curfew, there was no one else about. It felt odd. There was always activity of some sort, even if it was just the sound of distant, rhythmic screaming.
Nikoleta stopped before she left the cloister and looked behind her. There, in the far corner, was the adept master. Almost, but not quite, impossible to detect, hidden in shadow and shrouded in white. He was watching her, to see what she’d do, to see whether she’d be obedient. Perhaps he hadn’t thought she’d spot him, but he made no further effort to hide. Why should he?
She gripped Thaler’s letter more tightly, and hurried down the vaulted corridor to the projector room.
When she’d first seen it, she’d been struck by its simplicity. For most novices, the discovery that spellcasting was a matter of will, disfigurement and rote learning that left little room for either aptitude or aesthetics was a surprise soon overcome. The same with the projector, which was nothing more than a glass sphere on a stand in the middle of an empty room. And even then, the stand was superfluous, and the sphere only there to be a focus. Masters, she was told, didn’t even need that.
She was alone, which was good, because she wasn’t used to queuing, and she didn’t need an audience, either, even though she’d projected dozens of times, never failing to connect after that first time, which had been humiliating and excruciating in equal measure. Not quite: the embarrassment had burnt long after the whip-marks had faded.
As she opened the door, she was struck by the smell, heavy and decaying, but on sight of the glass, she blotted it out. “Hoson zês, phainou. Mêden holôs su lupou.”