The God of Lost Words

by A J Hackwith

  “Oh, pish. Come on, warden.” Hero lolled against the banister of the stairs, cleverly positioned where he had a strategic view of the room—all except the nook of the service hallway Brevity stood in. “No one here but us monsters now. You can stop pretending you saved that little demon trap by chance.”

  Claire’s chin took a mulish jut. “I don’t—”

  “Why, Claire?” Hero interrupted softly.

  The air deflated out of her. She said something too soft to hear, then appeared to repeat it. “We need him.”

  That caught Hero off guard. He nearly straightened from his lazy pose—to make a character break character was a feat. He eased back down again, eyes narrowed. “You mean Andras.”

  Claire nodded grimly. “Malphas went after the Arcane Wing first. And we’re still breathing. Therefore, I’m assuming she’s not at the Unwritten Wing’s gates now. That means she’s settling in for a long campaign, to control the books rather than destroy them. She took our arsenal, the closest thing the Unwritten Wing has to weaponry”—she made a placating gesture—“aside from you and Ramiel, of course.”

  “Charmed,” Hero muttered.

  “She’s making her move for the Unwritten Wing. She’s been patient and careful, but we’ve given her too good an opportunity, with you and the cover-up over the ink. I don’t know if she knows books are soul stuff yet, but if not, she will soon. Then wards and brute force won’t be enough to hold her back. We’ll need to play like demons.”

  “We’ll need to play like Andras,” Hero supplied with a bitter tone. “You thought of all this in the mad dash from one wing to another?”

  “I’ve thought of all this since the moment the wing shoved ten tons of demon antagonist into a six-inch blade.”

  “Oh really, I’d say five at most.” Hero didn’t appear to be in the mood to be generous.

  “I don’t know how we’ll do it yet, and I certainly am not doing anything until I know we have a damned good way to leash him,” Claire continued. “But we lost a great many weapons of power just now.” She paused, taking a slow, staggered breath, the loss still smoking behind her. She pressed her lips into a thin line before continuing. “And of all the artifacts in the Arcane Wing, this little bauble may have been what Malphas had hoped to melt down to slag the most.” Claire made a gesture and a distasteful face at the dagger cooling on the floor. “She’s scared of it. That means we can use it.”

  “Or he can use us.”

  “As I said, I’ll figure out a way to leash him.”

  “Oh, trust me, warden, I know how good you are at binding bad men to your cause.”

  Claire’s face lost some of its doom. Her grim frown gave way to the slightest smile. “You’re not a bad man, Hero.”

  “You’re right—I am a terror.” Hero crouched down next to the silver blade. It had cooled enough to be picked up, which Hero did as if it were a particularly stinky fish. “I’m your monster too. We can handle one pissant demon.”

  “And the army waiting in the wings?” Claire asked with amusement.

  “Those I trust to you. You’ve handled worse before,” Hero said with complete confidence. He dropped the dagger again and sniffed. “But say the word, and I’ll serve you Andras’s throat on a platter. I haven’t forgiven him for the delightful makeover he gave me.” He tilted his scarred cheek to the light with a frown.

  Claire chuckled. “Vain as always.”

  “Clever as always,” Hero returned.

  It seemed as good as any point. Brevity exchanged a look with Rosia and stamped her feet in place loudly, mimicking a clatter of a run before emerging from her hiding place. Rosia followed. Brev hoisted the box of bandages in the air like a trophy. “Found them!”

  “It took some time,” Claire commented, worry knitting her brows together. “The Unwritten Wing?”

  “Quiet,” Brevity assured her quickly. “The doors fixed themselves, and no sign of demons. The gargoyle’s on high alert and I did lock the way, just in case.”

  “Whatever do you keep me around for?” Hero said with a wink. He approached and, taking the box from Brevity, leaned close enough to whisper, “Couldn’t have given me another minute, Librarian?”

  Perhaps Brevity hadn’t been as stealthy as she’d thought. However, Hero didn’t seem bothered. He followed her over to Claire and efficiently selected the necessary materials to bandage Claire’s raw palm. Of course, a character from a war-torn book would be well versed in basic first aid. And Claire’d been right. The burns were already healing, at a slower pace than either Brevity or Hero recovered, but Claire would be fine enough after a rest and, likely, a cup of tea.

  “We shouldn’t linger here,” Hero announced once he was done.

  “Quite right,” Claire said. She stood and dusted off her skirts out of habit, though she was so soot caked it hardly had an effect. She grimaced at herself. “We should regroup and let our guests know what trouble they’ve caused already.” She frowned. “Assuming Rami hasn’t rethought his alliances and . . .”

  “He’s waiting for you both,” Rosia said with confidence. Of course he was. As if any disagreement could dislodge him from his loyalties. It was obvious to Brevity how tightly enmeshed the Watcher had become with the Library. But she saw the relief flicker between Hero’s and Claire’s expressions like a firefly. For a moment Brevity thought she could almost see the thin shimmer of the magic that wound around all of them, binding them together like matching books. Humans sometimes called it many things: love, duty, family.

  Brevity called it hope.

  11

  RAMI

  A library is people. Just as much as it is books and archives. You want to know the heart of a library, don’t look at its most famous books; look at the people it serves. Who it comforts, who it protects. The heart of a library may be its books, but its soul is its people. Humans and stories, impossible to separate the two.

  Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 603 CE

  A clatter of noise signaled the arrival of the rest of the Library crew in the front lobby. Ramiel gradually slowed his step. He’d been pacing a path in the Melodrama (Korean) section, close enough to keep an eye on the lobby without being found by pesky helpful ex-muses. Walking helped him think, though it was a distant replacement for flying.

  And he was thinking he’d been, as Hero would say, an ass.

  Ramiel had been dealing with humans for a long time. As a Watcher, then as a wannabe angel at the Gates. He’d never been invested in one, cared about one, as he cared about Claire, Hero, and Brevity. He was finding the pure, fragile madness of humans more of an issue when he cared about the particular outcome. He’d been afraid when he’d hurtled after Claire into the fire. When he’d realized she had risked her life for that damned knife, he’d been angry. But not at her. At a world that felt made to break vulnerable mortals at every turn. It was terrifying. He didn’t know how Claire even functioned with it.

  Probably not by losing one’s temper with one’s allies and storming off like a clod.

  Ramiel rubbed the remaining soot off his face and peeked around the corner of the stacks. The sight and sound of Brevity clattering around the desk was comforting, at least. Hero had dropped himself over the armchair that gave him a view of the front doors while Claire hovered, obviously uncomfortable for more reasons than just smoke-singed clothing.

  “Shouldn’t we make this official?” Brevity said, her smile soft and hopeful. “Rejoin the Unwritten Wing again?”

  A torrent of emotions flinched across Claire’s face, stowed away by reflex. Rami cleared his throat and stepped out of hiding to join the conversation. “Of course. We’d be grateful to assist here with the Arcane Wing gone.”

  “Assist. Pssh.” Brevity yanked open a lower drawer on her desk and began scrounging in its depths. “I can do better than—aha! Found it.”

  “Should we get cle
aned up first?” Rami asked uncertainly. Claire was holding the burnt edges of her skirt with one hand. Brevity hauled a small box to her desktop and set it beside the Librarian’s Log carefully.

  “Nonsense! The books won’t care.” Brevity was already in the process of herding Claire toward the desk. She shuffled things around until Rami was squeezed into the oversized armchair with Claire. The previous disagreement was forgotten—at least by the muse. Claire tensed, obviously ready for Rami’s withdrawal. It made shame stew in his stomach.

  He squeezed his knees together in an awkward attempt to not take up more than his allotted share of space. Claire risked a glance to her side and Rami grimaced and bowed his head gently. An apology, of sorts, though he knew he would need to explain later.

  “Okay. Just a little . . . and Claire . . . and . . . oh, Rami, you don’t have a last name, do you?” Brevity held her pen poised over the Librarian’s Log. Rami gingerly extracted himself from the chair to peer over the desk. Brevity had turned the book to a blank page, and scrawling in her looping, exuberant script, she’d improvised an attempt, in plain language, at a basic decree stating he and Claire were hereby inducted into the service of the Unwritten Wing.

  “We can do that?” Hero muttered from Brevity’s other side.

  “Course we can. Just need some fine print annnnnd . . .” Brevity said with no trace of doubt. She tightened her script to a few minuscule lines at the bottom of the page. “. . . and done. Sign here.”

  “Fine print?” Rami echoed blankly.

  Hero elbowed his way to squint at the book. “It says . . . did you just write ‘peanut butter and jelly’ over and over?”

  “The details don’t matter.” Brevity shooed him off in order to spin the heavy book around on the scarred wood surface. “Sign there. Both of you.”

  “I don’t—” Rami hesitated and glanced at Claire. Her lips were pressed in a pale line of discomfort. For a moment, it appeared she would object. Finally she released a terse breath through her teeth and snatched up the pen. “Give it here.”

  Claire’s signature was swift and complete—Claire Juniper Hadley—and then she pushed the pen into Rami’s hands. “It’s fine. Let’s just . . . be done with it.”

  There was an undertone to Claire’s voice that was wound tighter than a harp string. Rami quieted his concerns and adjusted his grip on the stylus. He’d . . . never signed something before, not in the sense of indicating his own agency, at least. Angels didn’t have agency. Fallen angels, only shame. The first choice Rami had made was to lend assistance to rescue the soul of Leto, Claire’s lost nephew.

  The choices had come fast after that. To abandon Uriel’s senseless thirst for blood, to protect Leto and help Claire and the others retain the Library. Decision after decision, with no moment to wait or breathe. Decisions cared nothing for his duty, or his sins, just action.

  He wrote his name under Claire’s and set down the pen swiftly. He expected a change. A thrill of magic, a chill, that susurrous wave of whispers that the Unwritten Wing had when something important happened. The air felt dry and stale without it. Everything was still. Rami coughed and stepped back. “What now?”

  “Now . . .” Brevity bounced on her heels. She seemed eminently satisfied by whatever had—or had not—happened. She wafted a hand over the book long enough to allow the ink to dry before shutting it again. “Now we make tea.”

  It felt like the stacks of books released a held breath. Brevity enlisted Hero’s help in making tea.

  “Claire?”

  “Hmm? Oh yes, thank you, Rami.” Claire accepted the cloth and absently wiped at her face. The tension hadn’t abated despite their supposed safety. She held still in the armchair, and eventually even her hands fell to her lap as she frowned into the distance.

  Is something wrong? seemed like a particularly obtuse question, even for Rami. So instead he reached for an irrelevant question. “Do you think the Unwritten Wing has accepted us back in?”

  Claire’s laugh was short and bitter. “Who knows? I thought I knew everything about the Library, and this entire endeavor has been a constant string of disproving that.” She caught Rami’s alarmed look and waved him off before burying her head in her hands. “The books cast me out and I thought I was done with this place. But here I am, right back here. Here! And this time a refugee, filthy with failure, begging them for the mercy I never once showed them.”

  “It’s not a mercy to welcome an old friend.”

  “The books and I were never friends,” Claire said warily.

  “You had to be once. You dreamed of writing, didn’t you? Writers are readers first.” Rami sat gingerly on the arm of the chair, not quite turned toward her. “I have learned a lot about books and stories since I came here. And the first thing I learned is that there’s a love between a reader and a story that no one can harm or possess.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I’ve simply enjoyed a book for pleasure.”

  “Now, I know that’s not true,” Rami murmured.

  Claire chuckled to herself and slanted her eyes at Rami between her fingers. “I see what you’re doing, Ramiel. This isn’t about Hero.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Rami agreed gently. “It’s about your attempts to isolate yourself again to punish yourself for your perceived failures—”

  “I burned the Arcane Wing down, Rami.”

  “Hell burned the Arcane Wing. You did everything in your power to save it.”

  “Much to your disapproval.”

  “My disapproval doesn’t matter.” He paused, making sure Claire understood what he was saying. “The Unwritten Wing accepts you returning because you never really left here, Claire. You are a writer, you are a reader, you are human. You are a part of the continuum of untold stories and will always have a place here.”

  “Says who?”

  “I do. You read books; I read souls.”

  “Same thing,” Claire said into her lap.

  “Same thing,” Rami affirmed.

  12

  CLAIRE

  History is told by the victors, isn’t that how it goes? Fight for something and lose, you’re insurrectionists, conspirators, terrorists. Fight for something and win, you’re rebels, freedom fighters, founding fathers. History is a story told in past tense, the best kind of propaganda.

  What everyone forgets is that, at one point in the story, every villain thinks they are the hero.

  History happens in the edit.

  Librarian Gregor Henry, 1986 CE

  Claire took the time to scrub the soot and ashes from her skin once they returned to the Unwritten Wing. Brevity had never moved into the restoration room that Claire’d used as an office, and there was still a small wardrobe of clothes—mostly castoffs and knitted monstrosities from the damsels—tucked in the back corner. She found a pair of loose trousers that didn’t have nearly enough pockets for her taste, but Claire paired them with a cardigan with deep enough pockets to hide half an encyclopedia.

  All pockets were best judged by book size, in Claire’s opinion.

  She left her streaked and singed clothes behind in a hamper. She’d been in the Library long enough to know that, given a few days, the next time she went seeking the wardrobe her garments would be whole again. Hell was a place for forgetting; even items wanted to forget their damage after enough time.

  By the time she emerged from the back room, Brevity—bless the muse down to her toes—already had a pot on. It appeared to have just come off the hot plate, and Brevity was deeply engrossed in flipping through the logbook, the cup at her elbow still steaming but already forgotten. Claire poured herself a cup and took a sip, pleasantly surprised to find it was a strong Darjeeling rather than the fruity nonsense Brev preferred.

  “Hero doesn’t like Earl Grey, else I would already have your favorite,” Brevity explained without looking up.
r />   “Bergamot is a scent, not a flavor, thank you,” Hero said.

  “Only because you’ve never had good Earl Grey.” Claire eased into a seat nearby. “Americans.”

  “We should discuss what our next course of action is,” Rami said, perhaps because he knew how Claire and Hero enjoyed a good tiff.

  Claire shrugged her shoulders with a defeated air. “What action? She’ll cut us off. Malphas isn’t stupid. She knows from watching Andras what a direct assault on the Library will bring.”

  “Damn straight,” Hero muttered.

  “But we can’t wait her out, either,” Rami cautioned. “Malphas will not be idle while she’s got us cornered in here. And Malphas has had eternity to cultivate superior strategy.”

  Claire tilted her head thoughtfully. “How lucky we have our own immortal being as well.”

  Rami nearly dropped the fragile teacup in his big hands. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Both you and Malphas are angels—were angels,” Claire corrected when Rami opened his mouth to argue. She tapped her fingers on her knee contemplatively and her glance veered between Hero and Rami. “You know how she thinks, how she’ll try to root us out. And you, Hero, you’ve already fought and won a war.”

  “A fictional one,” Hero reminded her with a dry air.

  Claire made a dismissive noise. “It makes it no less real. You have told me that often enough—will you deny it now?” When Hero merely pursed his lips, Claire nodded. She didn’t have a plan, not yet, but she could see the pins on which they would hang it. “If I asked you two to put your heads together, can we hold the Library?”

  “No,” Rami said grimly.

  “Definitely not,” admitted Hero.

  “Not forever, obviously. Can we buy ourselves time?” Claire said. “They’ll loot and burn this place to the ground, as has been done to libraries countless times through history. Hell is not an option anymore. So what are our options?”

  The silence was painful, needling all of them. No one wanted to say the obvious option, so Claire did it for them. “We could run, of course. Tell the damsels they’re off the books, then every soul for themselves. Abandon ship; maybe those of us with souls can work our way to Mdina for sanctuary before Hell notices. The Library will have an interest in Hero, of course, and I’ll be in another ghostlight situation, but Rami, Brevity, you two would have no trouble slipping off—”