“How long have you had that shirt, Declan?” she said while they waited at a Deviser’s shop for the woman to check her inventory to see if she had enough self-inking pens to meet Alison’s needs. Declan flushed and crossed his arms across his chest. “Declan, lift your arms.” There was a hole the size of her fist in the seam under his arm. Alison ran her eye over both young men. Not only were their uniforms tattered, they were in Scholia colors and bore the black and red Scholia insignia. Alison lifted the hem of Trevers’ tunic and tugged a thread that unraveled as she pulled. “Well, that has to change,” she said.
She took them to a tailor’s for fittings for knee-length sleeveless tunics and trousers in the Tremontane colors of forest green and walnut brown, bought shirts and socks and—without regard for their embarrassment—underclothing, and bought ready-made shoes and had them fitted for ankle boots. Someone in the palace would be able to put together a badge with the insignia of Tremontane on it. By the time she was done, she’d spent more guilders in a single afternoon than she’d ever spent at one time before. Her tension was almost gone. Spending money made things better.
“Now,” she said when they returned with their booty, “we’re going to put all of this away. You were never allowed in the Library, were you?” Both Trevers and Declan shook their heads. “Well, that’s going to change. I don’t know what Bancroft told you, but there really aren’t very many rules about how to behave in the Library. No food. No fire. No running. And no touching the books until I say you can. Break one of those rules, and you’ll be looking for a new apprenticeship. Any questions?” That righteous anger still surged through her, hot and fierce, and she was deeply satisfied to see how nervous they looked as they nodded understanding, though she was sure she’d feel guilty later about intimidating them.
It took them an hour to put everything away, and a lot of men came while they were working to set up the light Devices. When everything was stowed away, Alison set the apprentices free for supper and visited the bindery. It was awe-inspiring and depressing all at once. The bindery Devices were, to her surprise, intrinsically beautiful, most of them at least a century old and carefully maintained the way the climate control Device in the Library had not been. They were in perfect condition—for museum pieces. Modern books wouldn’t even fit into their braces. It was the most depressing thing she’d seen all day—no, the image of that dangling, empty chain kept returning to mind, and she cursed Bancroft and Baxter and Edwin again, but half-heartedly, because the righteous anger was beginning to drain out of her, leaving her exhausted. Fortunately, nothing here had been taken. If they had a modern Device for binding books, they’d be able to make repairs to just about any damage the Library books had sustained. She’d have to ask the Deviser she’d called on to look at the climate control Device if there was anything that could be done to update the bindery Devices.
Her stomach growled. She looked at her watch and realized she’d missed her own supper. She was filthy from book grime and Devices and couldn’t very well go to a restaurant looking like that. So she did the only reasonable thing left to her. She went back into the Library.
The Devices had dispelled most of the shadows. She really ought to have turned them off before going to the bindery. She wandered through the stacks, brushing her hand against the leather and cloth spines, smiling when she found old friends. When she reached the back of the room, she turned back and began putting out the Devices as she went. As the room darkened, she felt tension drain out of her, soaked up by the ancient stones. Zara was right; she wanted this job, and she was certain now she’d be good at it.
She went back to the inn where she’d taken a room earlier that morning so she’d have somewhere to put her luggage while she went to the palace. It wasn’t too late for supper there, so she ordered a meal and then took a bath. You wouldn’t think librarian was a dirty job, but then you wouldn’t think a trained librarian could so grossly abuse his position. Her remaining outrage, and sorrow, and irritation all faded, soaked away by the hot water. Tomorrow, lots of letters home. Zara had been right; she couldn’t put this second to anything else. Her cousin Patrick would be able to handle things for a few weeks. Tomorrow, find out if she could take chambers in the palace. Going back and forth from this inn would be inconvenient. Tomorrow…tomorrow everything.
She got out of the bath and got ready for bed, combing her hair until it was tame and then braiding it so it would stay that way. She hated her hair. They had loved each other, they really had, so she shouldn’t feel ashamed to remember Anthony touching her hair, touching her…everything…but the memory was so tied up in his betrayal it made her cringe. She wanted to forget about it entirely, would succeed for a while, but then she would have the dream where she didn’t make him stop and she’d wake up crying and hating herself for being so weak as to still desire him. She rolled over onto her side and clutched her pillow. I’m not going to dream tonight, I’m not, she thought, and she didn’t.
She wrote a lot of letters the next day, mostly to her father, her authors, and her estate agent. She sent a message to the employment agency, inquiring about Belle’s availability. She wrote to her heir Patrick to make sure he understood the situation. She had no idea how she would be able to perform her duties as Countess and run the Royal Library, but it couldn’t be more difficult than serving on the Queen’s Council would be, yes? A treacherous voice in the back of her mind whispered, You know you already care more about that sad, gutted shell of a Library than you do about County Waxwold.
After some thought, she wrote another letter and posted it with the rest. It was a long shot, but someone had to know where Henry Catherton had ended up, and she could use his advice if not his help. And she hadn’t had a real friend since Tessa had disappeared with her husband.
Later, she watched the Deviser tinker with the climate control Device and reflected on her situation. The Library budget was probably big, but it wouldn’t be big enough to replace the missing books, assuming they even could. And she’d need more laborers. People to haul books out of the Library and into the scriptorium for cleaning and title matching. People to remove the shelves and repair the floor. People to put everything back. Readers to match the books with the titles, and that would mean educated labor. More things to put on her list for Zara. She left the Deviser to his work and wandered through the stacks.
This time, she looked at the shelves with an eye toward seeing what the collection held. There were a lot of titles she didn’t recognize and many more she did. Ambler’s Holiday, not valuable in itself, but an excellent representation of Duforda’s early work. Binder of Two Worlds, A Fantasy, just what it said on the cover. And—she swallowed hard—Hearthsfire. First edition. All by itself, the rest of the trilogy absent. Anthony’s copy had been in better condition. She took it down from the shelf and flipped through it, put it away hesitantly, then picked it up again and found the place where she’d left off reading when Anthony and Bishop came back that afternoon. She’d take it back to the inn that evening. Bancroft’s no-lending policy was over, at least as far as her own borrowing was concerned.
After dinner she went back to the offices. “Chambers?” the woman at the desk said. “You want to go to Household.” Household sent her to Domestics, who could assign her a maid but not a room for the maid to clean. Domestics sent her to Physical Facilities, who at least knew she should have quarters but not where they were. Physical Facilities sent her back to the front desk, which sent her to a tiny, dark office staffed by a wrinkled old man who apparently kept the entire blueprint of the palace in his head. He escorted her to a door near the Library she’d already passed half a dozen times that day, handed her the key and patted her shoulder. “They’re all yours, milady Countess,” he said.
The smell of rotten food and stale sweat that wafted from the Royal Librarian’s chambers when Alison opened the door made her gag. She pinched her nose closed and stepped inside. The door opened on a small sitting room with two chairs drawn up to a
fireplace that had been filled in and replaced with a shining brass and silver heating Device. It was the only clean thing in the room. Plates of rotten food and glasses coated with the dried residue of juice or wine were stacked on the floor and on one of the chairs, crusts and the rinds of withered fruits lay strewn across the old mantel, and limp, unlaundered clothing was heaped on the floor and kicked under the chairs. Alison nudged one of the piles of clothes with her toe and shrieked a little when a large beetle ran out from underneath it. She moved on through the suite of rooms. The bed in the bedroom was unmade, the sheets and the mattress beneath them were stained with sweat, and loose shoes were scattered under the bed and in the bottom of the wardrobe. The study table was also covered with dirty dishes; the bookcases were filled with books and papers piled haphazardly on the shelves. She couldn’t bear to take more than two steps into the bathing chamber, which reeked of the clashing odors of five different colognes and the smell of a body that used that many colognes to cover the fact that he rarely bathed. Alison closed the door on it, shuddering, and leaned against it. Was she going to have to clean everything related to the Library before she could use it?
She went back to Domestics and wangled not one, but three maids to clean the apartment, instructing them to get rid of all the dirty clothes and bedding, throw away the food, and make piles of everything else. She thought about it further and told them to replace the mattress and pillows and remove the sofa cushions for cleaning too. She wandered from the bedroom into the study, staying out of the maids’ way, and began poking at the books crammed onto the shelves. It would be poetic justice if she took them all for the Library, she told herself, and began sorting through them. It took her a moment to realize what she was holding. These were some very valuable books indeed. And every one of them was stamped with the mark of the Royal Library inside the back cover.
It was a pity Bancroft had already been convicted. Alison briefly fantasized about marching up to the court and spreading all of these books out for the world to see. How dared he steal from the people of Tremontane? How dared he steal from her? She clasped an octavo to her chest and took a few calming breaths. So she’d recovered a few of the missing books. Who knew how many more were still missing? She ran back to Domestics and came away with some crates and a couple of burly men to carry them.
Once she’d gotten the books safely put away in the Library—the Device was working now and she imagined she could feel the air drying out around her—she locked the door behind her and went back to the inn, took a bath, then put on her dressing gown and ordered supper, which she ate in her room. Fed, clean, and free of obligations, she lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling. She felt tired, but not sleepy. She rolled over. She had Hearthsfire, but she didn’t feel like reading. She looked at her watch, and considered. Henrietta Magnificat had opened at the Waxwold Theater three days before. If she hurried, she might only miss a little of the first act. She didn’t have any gowns with her, but if she sat well back in her box, no one would notice. She combed her hair and had the innkeeper call her a carriage.
Doyle was in the lobby when she got to the theater. “Allie!” he exclaimed, not too loudly so as not to disrupt the performance. Then his face went wary. “What are you doing here?” he said, taking her arm and drawing her into his office. “I thought you weren’t coming back to Aurilien for, you know, forever.”
“It’s a long story, and I really just want to see the show. I’m not too late, am I?”
“Curtain went up five minutes ago,” Doyle said, shaking his head, “but you might want to reconsider going up to your box.” He’d gone from wary to guilty.
“What’s wrong with my box?” Alison said, alarmed.
“Nothing. It’s just—” Doyle ran his fingers through his thinning brown hair. “It’s just the Crown Prince of Tremontane is sitting in it right now.”
Alison blinked at him. “What?” she exclaimed.
Doyle shushed her, took hold of her arm and drew her toward his office. “It’s a long story, Allie, and you’ve already missed some of the first act, so how about we sit in here, and I’ll get Marco to make us some tea, and we can tell each other our long stories until you calm down enough not to kill me.”
She wrenched her arm away. “I’ll kill him first. How dare he take over my box like he owns it? I’m going to throw him out—”
“During the performance? Make a scene like that? Not you.”
Alison hesitated. “Damn you, Doyle.”
“Too late for that. I don’t know whether heaven will even take my soul, it’s got so many liens on it.” He guided her gently to a seat and went away to talk to Marco. Alison waited, tapping her foot furiously. Doyle didn’t return. Her irritation began to fade, just a little, and she struggled to keep hold of it, but it slipped away until it was nothing but an echo. After enough time to make three pots of tea, Doyle finally pushed the door open. “So, what brings you back to town?” he asked.
“Oh, no. We are hearing your story first.” Alison crossed her arms over her chest and went back to tapping her foot. Doyle cleared his throat and looked at his shoes.
“Well. You know we liked having the Prince around, even if we did have to keep up the whole ‘Tony Sutherland’ pretense. He was everybody’s favorite audience, on stage and off. Then the whole scandal burst. Hard to winnow out the truth from the rumor, but the least of what we heard was bad enough we all felt badly used on your behalf, and nobody wanted to see Tony Sutherland again no matter what name he used.
“Then, maybe three weeks after Wintersmeet, the week Splinter of the Heart opened, he showed up at the gate and asked to see me. Told me who he really was—I can’t believe he thought we were fooled by the false name—and apologized for lying to us. I was pretty frosty with him, still angry on your behalf, and he said he knew he couldn’t make amends for that, he just wanted to buy a ticket for a box. I’ve never seen anyone so miserable in my life. He didn’t try to make excuses, just said he wanted to get away for a while. And he had a lot to get away from. I felt…I’m sorry, Alison, but I felt sorry for him. I thought—well, that doesn’t matter, but basically I took his money and then realized we only had the one box available. So I put him in yours.”
“Doyle, how could you do that to me?”
“I don’t see how it hurt you at all. You weren’t using it. Nobody actually knows it’s your box. And I looked up once or twice from the pit and I couldn’t even see him, he sat that far back. So if you’re worried about looking soft, don’t. Nobody’s going to think you’ve forgiven the Prince for…what exactly did he do? Like I said, rumor was pretty thick on the ground, and we didn’t want to make assumptions except it couldn’t have been as bad as it sounded.”
“He bet someone he could get me into his bed before Wintersmeet Eve.”
Doyle whistled. “I can see where you couldn’t forgive him for that, but I have to say, Allie, that’s a lot better than what we were hearing. I don’t know who started spreading the rumors, but it must have been someone who hated him, because they were too vicious to have sprung up on their own.”
Bishop, Alison thought, and felt a rush of fury tangled with an unexpected sympathy for Anthony. She might not be able to forgive him, and she’d never trust him again, but he didn’t deserve to be the center of any calumny that degenerate bastard might have spread.
Marco brought a tray into the room that held mismatched mugs and a chipped teapot and sugar in a bowl that had started life as a greasepaint container. When the boy left, Doyle continued, “Like I said, I felt sorry for him. I don’t know what punishment he deserves for hurting you, but nobody deserved being drawn and quartered like that. He left before the performance was entirely over. I didn’t think I’d see him again, but he came back the next week, and I gave him your box again. That time, he stayed so long I went to see if he was still alive, and he said he was just waiting for everyone to leave. So I invited him backstage. You know how theater people are, Allie, attention span the
size of a gnat’s whisker unless it’s about them. If they remembered anything about him, it was what he’d told them about their last performance. Jerald was furious he’d been away so long.” Doyle took a long drink out of his mug, made a face, and dug out a bottle of whiskey from his bottom drawer. He poured in a generous measure, offered it to Alison, then put it away when she declined. “Then he just kept coming back. He made friends with Junia and got to know the props department, and got Caleb a line on costumes for Wintersmeet Ball, and of course you already know he’s the only person in Tremontane, Eskandel, and Veribold who gets along with Jerald.”
“You didn’t have to be so nice to him,” she said.
Doyle gave her a long, level look. “And you don’t get to tell me how I should behave to anyone,” he said. “I understand that you can’t forgive him, Allie, and I don’t know whether he deserves your forgiveness. But I think he’s done a lot of things he’s ashamed of and most of them aren’t about you. You think your grievance is so great he should never be forgiven for anything else?” He took another long drink. “You never used to be this bitter.”
“I never had so much cause before,” she said.
He waved that away with his mug. “You want to hang onto your bitterness, doesn’t matter how much cause you have, you’re still only hurting yourself.”
His words were so like her father’s it stunned her. “You think I’m wrong not to forgive him?” she asked.
“I already said I don’t know that he deserves your forgiveness. But I’m damn sure he doesn’t deserve your hatred.” He drank again. “He’s changed,” he said. “Still got that…still cheerful, but less chatty. He used to listen like, well, he did care what people were saying, but you could see him lining up what he was going to say next as soon as you stopped talking. That’s gone. And…Allie, stop giving me that look.”
Servant of the Crown (The Crown of Tremontane Book 1) Page 22