“He’s not in custody, then?”
“Oh, he is, for now. The Scholia insists he be returned to them for justice, which would be the same as letting him go free. I haven’t decided yet how far I want to push things. They’re nominally under my jurisdiction, but in the spirit of free learning and inquiry—” she rolled her eyes—“they govern themselves in internal matters. And they’re insisting that because his crime involved the Library, that brings it under their jurisdiction. It’s nonsense, but Scholia Masters are positioned in key roles all over Tremontane, so the balance of power is sensitive. Well, at the very least I can squeeze most of what he embezzled out of him and his co-conspirators.”
“I feel a little sorry for Edwin. He always seemed trapped between what he knew was right and what his superiors told him to do.”
“I feel no such sorrow. He cared more about keeping his superiors happy than doing the right thing. Something I’m sure you can relate to.”
Alison felt her face go blotchy, but with anger rather than humiliation. She lowered her head so she wouldn’t have to look at the Queen. She hadn’t believed Zara could be so thoughtless.
She heard Zara shift in her chair, and say, “I wonder if all our meetings are going to involve me apologizing for my brother.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Alison said, not looking up. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Apparently I did,” said Zara. “I neglected him as much as I did your Library. I let him go his own way after our father died and never considered that I was letting my heir turn into—well. I don’t have to tell you.”
“Are you trying to make excuses for him, your Majesty?”
“Are there any you would accept? I think there is nothing I can say that excuses what he did to you. I have had Anthony’s full story, his part of it, and if there is anything I can tell you, anything I can do to ease your mind, I believe I owe you that. But I will never speak of this again unless you bring it up.”
“I would rather not speak of it.” She looked at Zara and saw compassion in her eyes, and had to look away again.
“Then we will not.” Zara said. “Though I would like you to know I would have enjoyed having you for a sister.”
Alison went blotchy again. “That was never going to happen.”
“No? And if there had been no wager? As far as I can tell, loving you was the one thing Anthony never lied about. Which has made it hard for me to forgive him and might make forgiveness impossible for you.” Zara cleared her throat. “But we’ve agreed not to talk about it, and I apologize for bringing it up. I would like you to assess the condition of the Library, make a list of recommendations, and make an appointment with my secretary for us to discuss what you’ve learned in, say, one week’s time.”
“I’ll need time to put my other affairs in order. I have County business to attend to as well.”
“That’s what the post is for.” Zara smiled wryly. “You may certainly have whatever time you need, but look at the Library first. I believe it will adjust your priorities.” She drew a folder toward herself and busied herself with its contents. The meeting was over.
Alison picked up the key, shining steel rather than rusted and pitted iron. A rush of pleasure filled her from head to toe. The Library. Her Library. She felt something she hadn’t felt in months. Joy. She smiled with pure happiness, opened the office door—
—and ran straight into Anthony North.
His left hand was raised in the act of knocking. His right hand held a sheaf of folders. “Excuse—” he said, then he said, “Dear heaven.” He looked as utterly stunned as Alison felt. Her heart thumped once, painfully hard. What cruel misfortune rules my life? she wondered. Of course he’d be here somewhere, but in Zara’s office? He doesn’t even work!
“I beg your pardon, your Highness,” she said, and stepped back to let him pass just as he did the same.
“No, please excuse me, Countess,” Anthony said. She took a breath, then brushed by him without looking at his face again. She heard Zara say, “Anthony, stop hovering in the doorway and get in here,” and then she was out of the office, out of the north wing, and standing on a third floor landing wondering what to do next.
So. She’d met him and she hadn’t dropped dead of humiliation or had to endure more of his protestations of love and pleas to forgive him. Zara was right; Anthony had loved her. So what? He’d loved her and he’d still exposed her to Bishop’s coarse comments and he’d still cared more about looking like a fool than he had about her. She’d been angry about it at the time and she was angry now. How could you even call that love? She realized she was standing in the middle of the hall, forcing people to step around her. What was she doing? Of course. Stupid. She clenched the key in her fist and tried not to run to the Library.
The scriptorium door still wasn’t locked. No reason to. There was nothing in that room worth stealing. She pushed the door open and was startled to find two young men and one woman lounging about on the desks. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“We’re the apprentices. Who are you?” the young woman retorted.
Encountering Anthony had left Alison in a heightened emotional state. The young woman’s smug tone of voice was like stone scraping over raw skin. She held up the Library key. “If you’re really apprentices, which I doubt, then I’m your new master,” she said. “Who are you, and why are you in the scriptorium?”
The younger boy sprang up. “We really are the apprentices, milady,” he said, and Alison realized she’d seen him in the Library before. “And you’re the Countess of Waxwold who made such a fuss about getting into the Library.”
“Guess you get your wish,” said the other young man, pale and pale-haired like Alison herself, but with light gray eyes. He looked as if he’d been bleached. Alison glared at him. “What’s your name?” she said.
“Declan,” he told her, still lounging. He grinned at her impertinently.
“Declan. And how long have you been an apprentice?”
“Five years.”
“And you need another two years to achieve a journeyman’s certificate that will allow you to work at another library, or in some related field.”
“Yes.” He started to look a little uncertain.
“Interesting that Bancroft didn’t take you with him. Oh, wait, that’s because he’s in prison.”
Declan looked confused and a little worried. “I know that.”
“So you might want to ask yourself, Declan, who’s going to sign that journeyman’s chit?”
The penny dropped. “Um,” Declan said, “you are. Your ladyship.”
“That’s right, Declan, I am. Or, rather, I might. I suggest you take some time to think about what kind of behavior will earn you that certificate. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”
The young woman, a skinny redhead, sniggered. “And your name is…?” Alison said.
“Gwendolen Burns, milady. Of the Westover Burnses.”
“I appreciate the information, Gwendolen. How long have you been an apprentice?”
“Three years, milady.” Gwendolen had the look of someone who was doing everyone a huge favor just by breathing the same air as them. Alison’s irritation increased. She tried to control it by asking the last apprentice, “And your name?”
“Trevers, your ladyship.” She did remember him. He was a small, dark-complected boy who’d seemed eager to respond to the needs of the patrons.
“Trevers, you’ve been an apprentice how long?”
“Just one year, milady.” And if she was any judge, he already knew more about the workings of the scriptorium than the other two. He’d be useful. The others…could she fire apprentices? She’d have to ask Zara, but she was willing to wager the answer was ‘yes.’
“Where are the others? I know I’ve seen more than the three of you in here.”
“They went back to the Scholia, your ladyship,” Trevers said. He ducked his head. “They were Scholia students. We’re just….” He left the s
entence hanging in the air. Alison could guess what they were: local labor hired at no wages beyond room and board, promised a journeyman’s chit if they did as they were told. No one a Scholia Master would consider worth expending effort on.
She took a deep breath and let it out. Sorting the apprentices out was interfering with what she actually wanted to do. “All right, you three. I’m going to take a look at the Library. I want you to put your heads together and make a list of all the tasks the librarians used to do, and all the tasks you were responsible for. There’s pens and paper, yes?”
The three of them shook their heads. “Baxter and Edwin took a lot of things when they left,” said Trevers.
“Weren’t they arrested with Bancroft?”
“They convinced the guards they weren’t important, that they didn’t know anything about what Master Bancroft was doing. Then the Queen sent other guards to arrest them, but they were already gone.”
Alison swore under her breath. “Fine. You just…just sit there quietly, and we’ll talk when I’ve finished this.” The Library was pulling at her so hard it was almost physical. “And don’t go anywhere.” She crossed the room with long strides—she had enough self-control not to run in front of the apprentices—slid the key into the lock, turned it, took another deep breath, and pushed the door open.
It was darker inside than the scriptorium. The high windows, dirty as Anth—as she’d been told, let very little light through. She stood at the top of a flight of stairs that descended into the darkness. She let her eyes adjust, scanned the room, and her mouth fell open.
The first thing she noticed was how big the room was. It was at least three stories high and might be bigger than the palace ballroom, though the lighting was so dim she couldn’t see the far end of the room. She thought it might once have been a reception room of some kind, though the floor was stone rather than wood and was in bad repair. The bookcases, six or seven shelves tall, filled its vastness, lining the walls or standing upright in the center like dancers frozen in mid-step.
The second thing she noticed was the gaps on the bookcase shelves. Big gaps. Gaps that should have held books. Every bookcase she could see had at least one big gap and a handful of smaller ones. Piles of books lay on the floor, haphazardly, some tipped so the books slid off the pile to lie loose and disregarded on the floor. Some of them lay open. Some of them, to her disgust, lay open on their faces. She couldn’t begin to tell how many books the Library still had.
The third thing she noticed was the smell. It was damp, and sour, and slightly mildewy. It was an unpleasant smell under any circumstances. In a library, it was a close second to the smell of smoke.
She cursed, a torrent of profanity spilling over her lips that she thought might fill the room. Fill it as the books did not. She descended the stairs. To think how she’d dreamed of how beautiful the place might be. This was more like a custom-made nightmare. She trailed her fingers along the spines, righted a couple of the piles, but it was all reflexive; her brain, unable to cope with the enormity of Bancroft’s desecration, had shut down.
She came to a brass tank, corroded and stained, that was about six feet long and two feet in diameter and lay on its side in a cradle. She flipped open a hatch at the top and saw gears, wires, and coils. The Device that controlled the Library’s climate. Not working. Not working for a while now, and that was just stupid, Bancroft would have benefited from keeping his cash cow in prime condition…no, it wasn’t stupid. He couldn’t afford to let a Deviser in here who might report on the Library’s condition. She couldn’t help it; she cursed again, a litany of furious insults to Bancroft’s parentage and sexual preferences. She couldn’t let him go to the Scholia for “justice.” The Scholia Masters had to see this for themselves.
She wandered around until she couldn’t bear it any longer. First thing, get the Device running and get some lights set up in here. She groaned. No, first thing was to get pen and paper so she could write down all the other first things. She cursed again, this time Baxter and Edwin, the latter of whom she was sorry she’d ever pitied. If she could get him alone she would wring his scrawny neck.
She went back upstairs, slammed and locked the door, then leaned against it and addressed the apprentices, who at least had done as she’d told them and stayed put. “Did any of you know about that?” she demanded.
They looked at each other. “We knew something was going on, milady,” Declan said (good, he’d worked out politeness was a survival strategy), “but we weren’t allowed inside. Is…is it bad?”
“It’s bad,” Alison said, “but it’s not irredeemable. Did Baxter and Edwin leave anything behind?”
They had. Not anything useful, no writing materials, no glue—wait, that would be in the bindery, maybe they hadn’t pillaged that. But they’d left a handful of bound volumes, long and thin, that turned out to be acquisition logs. Alison had no idea why they’d bother keeping those records, given that they wrote the same information in the same order in the catalog. Well, the acquisition logs just had titles and dates; the catalog would have more detailed listings.
Right. The catalog. She went to the lectern.
It was empty. The chain dangled almost to the floor, unattached to anything.
Alison’s heart sank. “Where’s the catalog?” she said.
The apprentices looked at one another. They looked guilty.
“Where’s the catalog?” Alison shouted. They looked even guiltier.
“Milady,” Trevers said, “they took it with them.”
Chapter Sixteen
Alison sank down onto a chair, put her elbows on the desk, and put her face in her hands. “They took it with them,” she repeated. “Did any of you see them do it?” Silence. She lifted her head and glared at them. “Did you?”
Declan said in a small voice, “They came back for it. They told the guards it wasn’t in the Library so it was theirs. They took it away.”
“You saw this? You didn’t say anything? You all knew what it was!”
“Nobody listens to apprentices,” Gwendolen said smugly. Alison itched to slap her.
“Gwendolen,” she said, as calmly as she could, “is there a reason everything you say comes out sounding like ‘I told you so’?”
“I’m sorry, milady, but I’ve been saying all along the Masters were doing something shady, and no one listened.” There was that sneer again. Alison imagined smacking the girl so hard she fell on her skinny rear end.
“You have not,” Trevers said hotly. “You only ever complain and brush your hair. Some days you don’t come in at all.” That was true. Alison had seen Declan and Trevers in the scriptorium, but she’d never seen Gwendolen before today.
“It’s not like I have to be here,” Gwendolen said. “My mother is Evangeline Burns. I can have any apprenticeship I want. This one isn’t very interesting, anyway.”
“Fine,” said Alison. “You’re fired.”
Gwendolen stood up, outraged. “You can’t do that!”
Alison still wasn’t sure she could, but she didn’t care. “I just did. Get to the apprentices’ hall and get your things, then go back to your mother, whoever she is.”
“You don’t know who Evangeline Burns is? Of the Westover Burnses?”
Alison’s fingers curled up into a fist. She opted for verbal violence. “Gwendolen, I don’t even know where Westover is. And I don’t care. If you think you can swan around here on the strength of whatever connections you think you have, then I don’t need you. And you don’t need this job. So get out. Declan, pull out those acquisitions logs. Trevers, do you know where you can get paper and pen and ink? Good. Bring those here. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Are you still here?” This to Gwendolen, who stood perfectly still with her mouth open in outrage, sputtering, unable to find words. “Look, Gwendolen, you’re going to be happier somewhere else. Now get out before I have a guard throw you out.” Was it acceptable to threaten violence to a girl no more than fifteen? Well, legally she was an adult
, and Alison was in a temper. No catalog. Even a disorganized, inaccurate one. Alison wanted to cry.
Gwendolen came to herself, said, “I didn’t want this apprenticeship anyway,” and stormed out. Alison helped Declan bring all the acquisitions logs to a desk and organize them by year. Trevers returned with writing supplies. “Now, I’m going to make several lists, and you two are going to tell me everything you remember about your tasks and the librarians’ duties,” she said. “And then…we are going shopping.”
It wasn’t as bad as Alison first thought, which still meant it was nightmarish. She’d paged through the catalog often enough that she could attest to the accuracy of the acquisitions logs, though she wasn’t sure how helpful that would be: title and date weren’t nearly enough information, said nothing about edition or printing or anything useful, but at least they could match books with titles and possibly get an idea of what Bancroft had stolen. She tried not to think about how slender a thread she was grasping.
She felt as if she were floundering. She had to return to the north wing to make an appointment to see Zara next week, something she’d forgotten in her distress over meeting Anthony so unexpectedly, then had left again before she remembered she had no idea what the Library budget was, or even if there was one. She ground her teeth and made herself count to ten, slowly, to focus herself. It didn’t matter for now. The Library might not have a budget, but Alison Quinn had plenty of funds, and she was sure she could be reimbursed. Somehow. She hoped it was with Bancroft’s money.
She took the apprentices into the city with her so she’d have someone to carry things. Reams of paper, neatly cut and packaged. Boxes of self-inking pens, gallons of ink to fill them with. She borrowed a cart from one of the stationers and loaded it up. Bound notebooks. Pencils. Then they went to the Devisers’ district to arrange for delivery of lights on tall stands, a portable heater and dehumidifier, and auto-focusing magnifiers. She didn’t feel like haggling, but the men and women she dealt with spoke to her with great respect, even the ones who didn’t know who she was. She felt filled to bursting with righteous anger. Maybe it showed.
Servant of the Crown (The Crown of Tremontane Book 1) Page 21