The God of Lost Words

by A J Hackwith

  Claire’s laughter was sharp as a razor. “Try again, Grandmother of Ghosts.”

  It was obvious Malphas hated that moniker. She sucked on her cheek a moment, looking for all the world like one of those aunties at the village market in Hero’s distant memories that would call you sweetie before fleecing you. “Give us Andras, and the Library can expand.”

  “No,” Claire said simply. “You relinquish all hold of the Library—and all souls within it.”

  Malphas made a snorting noise. “Retribution on one bastard duke—even one as annoying as Andras—is not worth that. Nothing is.”

  “Nothing?” Claire said with a mild smile.

  The negotiations were interminable. Hero stopped paying attention after he sipped his way through the first glass of wine. By the second, he was out of demons to study and bored, and by the third, he found he didn’t mind anymore. He was idly curious to see what would run dry first—Malphas’s threats or Claire’s scheming.

  She really was devastatingly attractive when she was like this—not in a sexual way, because in this mode she was also incredibly terrifying in that all-powerful way authors were to books. But attractive, like a natural disaster.

  “The angel, then.” Malphas’s cool tone ripped Hero back to attention. The demon general slouched back in her divan with a syrup-slow smile. “Forget the duke. Let’s talk your pet Watcher.”

  “Ramiel is not here for negotiation,” Claire said stiffly. She still hadn’t touched her wine, and if anything she rose straighter in her chair, hands folded in her lap. Beneath the table, Hero could see they were clenched.

  “You’ve rejected every other reasonable concession, child. Let’s just explore one more,” Malphas said mildly. “Or are you the one now wasting time?”

  “We don’t barter people.”

  “But Ramiel is not a people, is he? He’s a fallen angel, same as all of us here. Same as Andras, and you were certainly quick to trade him away.” Malphas’s tone took on the eminently reasonable, inoffensive watercolor of logic that all the worst people used to do wrongs to others. “If you’ve grown fond, remember he’s immortal. I doubt we could hurt him if we tried.”

  “You would,” Andras said in a granite voice. “Try.”

  Malphas shrugged. She repositioned the silk wrap around her shoulders. The illusion of some beneficent old dowager just settling in. Granting boons instead of curses. “Even demons have to find something to pass the time.”

  “You ask for a member of my family but offer nothing. It’s not worth a crumb of freedom.”

  “What about the whole cake?” The entire table fell silent and Malphas took a prolonged pause to sip from her glass. “Andras might buy you a crumb, but leave Ramiel here and the Library can leave the realm with Hell’s blessing.”

  “You’re not serious,” Claire said softly.

  “I’m a demon. What do you want, a pinkie swear?” Malphas’s chuckle was ghoulish. “If you don’t trust my word, perhaps you’ll take Hell’s.” She struck the side of her glass with a spoon, and the crystal ring was sharp enough to make everyone else at the table wince. She cleared her throat, though her voice carried well through the immediate silence. “Attention, you lovely beasties.”

  “What’s your game, Malphas?” Hero muttered. He gave a reassuring shake of the head to Rami. Claire would rather chew off her own hand than abandon any of them in a place like this. She would not take the bait. Hero was more concerned about what Malphas’s next play would be when she refused.

  Malphas stood, rising from her seat every bit the queen she said she wasn’t. “The Library wants to abandon the generous protection of our realm.” The crowd began to rumble with the appropriate disapproval, but Malphas held up a staying hand. “Aye, but Lucifer knows mortals are shortsighted. However, the Library is a . . . significant resource to Hell’s community.” The wrinkles around her eyes multiplied as she squinted cannily at Claire. It was all but admitting Malphas knew how many souls were hidden in the Unwritten Wing alone. The confirmation sent a chill down Hero’s spine.

  “It is a great loss, but we are nothing if not reasonable, aren’t we, boys?” She was in military-commander mode now, psyching up the troops, making everything look like her idea. Perhaps it was. Hero smelled a trap. “Now, I’ve made the former librarian here a completely reasonable offer that includes the return of our long-lost brother, Ramiel, who I know you’ve all missed so dearly . . .”

  Malphas trailed off for their benefit. So Hero could precisely taste the malevolent interest as all demon gazes in the room slid to take in Rami. The oily underside of the pause made Hero’s jaw clench. He may not have understood the finer animosity between Watchers and the fallen angels who had embraced the demonic place in Hell, but Hero did understand revenge, objectification, possession.

  It was ridiculous that Claire was allowing this farce to go on this long.

  “I’ll go,” someone whispered to Hero’s right. Claire’s expression fell as she processed who’d said it a second before Hero did. He jolted out of his chair, causing a terrible racket as he stood. Rami had his hands folded in his lap, shoulders tense and turned in but resolved. “I’ll do it.”

  “The hell you will,” Hero growled. He swung around to get support from Claire—she was very good at reining in Rami’s handsome idiot tendencies—but she was looking at her hands as if she was contemplating a great evil.

  Well, there was no contemplating that.

  “The hell you will,” Hero repeated firmly.

  “So much spirit in the young ones. This will be bloody,” Malphas muttered into her wineglass with relish.

  “Hero—” Claire raised a placating hand, but he didn’t like the pity in her eyes. No, pity meant he was wrong. Hero was wrong about many glorious and impressive things, but not this. Not Rami. If there were two truths in his life, the first one was that Rami belonged with them. The second one was that Claire, in different ways, did too. They were the cardinal points on his compass, and the hesitancy that hung in the air right now sent the arrow spinning.

  “Tell him he’s not. Tell him.” The thread of fear in Hero’s voice was agonizing, but he didn’t break eye contact with Claire. He didn’t like the way she blinked, hated the way the fine muscles along her stubborn jaw tightened. It broke his remaining certainty, and he added, more softly, “Please.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Rami interrupted the thick silence. A strange, sharp edge to his voice brought Hero’s head around. He had a challenging look in his eyes, the soothing gray darkened to coal. “I’m of no other use to you.”

  “You are of use to me,” Hero snarled viciously. The barbs winding around his chest were so tight he nearly jumped out of his skin when Claire laid a soft hand on his arm.

  “Hero,” she said quietly. “You swore to follow my lead here.”

  “Your lead can go hang—”

  “What use am I to you?” Rami asked, contemplatively.

  The calm—the resignation—in Rami’s voice incited Hero. It altered the usual flippant answer he might have given. Without it, his need was exposed and raw when he answered.

  “Because I love you, you ignorant bastard.”

  A grunt came from Andras’s direction, but Hero kept his eyes locked with Rami’s. Hero expected any number of reactions. He had grown to relish the velvet-tender way Rami’s eyes could soften when looking at him. He might have even accepted seeing pain and pity, with Rami set on his self-destructive course. But the crook of his lips was a gut punch, followed swiftly with a mortal wound as Rami simply tilted his head in calm, curious interest.

  Hero felt as if he were bleeding from an unseen wound.

  “You said you trusted me.” Claire’s hand tightened on him, and a shuttered look came over her face. It was a look Hero was infinitely familiar with by now, and it caught and fizzled the anger in his throat. She didn’t look away, but
emotionally she hunkered down, braced for a terrible answer. “Do you trust me?”

  The air was stale with avarice. The demons that crowded the room had ceased their farce of partying to watch the argument unfold. The crumbling of Hero’s world was nothing but a melodrama for Hell. He couldn’t breathe. It’d been so long since he’d been betrayed that he’d forgotten, like old scars, how much it hurt.

  “I trusted you,” he finally answered, and he felt his tone crack. He forced himself to look at Rami, face the calm and ease with which the angel could walk away from him. “I trusted you,” he said in a broken whisper.

  “Let’s make this distasteful business official, then. I will hand over this one, and he will return to your realm—as a member, not a prisoner. And will not be punished for whatever slight you have perceived in the past. All obligations of the Library to its host realm will be terminated, furthermore—” Claire was saying, wrestling through the possible loopholes with the sturdy finesse of a barrister. Hero couldn’t find it in him to care. He abruptly shifted his attention to the table and snatched the wineglass. He drained it in one snarling gulp. He’d lost the chance to disseminate or pretend indifference, but he would not fall apart in front of his enemies. He clenched his jaw until he tasted his own blood. The Library had softened him, made him able to bleed like this now. But the demons would not taste his tears; he would give no one that pleasure.

  “We have an accord,” Malphas said.

  He must have a masochistic streak, because he found himself looking at Rami again. The angel seemed unruffled by Claire’s betrayal and the horrors of his future in Hell. Hero had the distant thought that it already seemed unreal. The creases of Rami’s trench coat seemed too clean, his rumpled feathers too straight. His craggy olive features cool as stone, and the silver in his eyes yellowed. Had Rami changed or had Hero just never seen him clearly? Had he been so easy to walk away from?

  The infernal wine roiled in his stomach and threatened to rise.

  “It’s done. Let’s get out of this disgusting place.” Claire tugged on Hero’s sleeve. Hero nodded, reaching gladly for the numbness that threatened to set in. He stumbled away from the table. He saw his feet manage a series of successful steps across the court as something dark and desperate welled up in his chest.

  He never reached the door.

  He twisted and surged back. He only made it a single step before he felt Claire catch his arm. “You can’t mean to stay here. You’re not one of them!” His voice was raw. Hero twisted it over the line to anger rather than heartbreak. “Giving yourself over to Hell won’t absolve you of whatever damned sins you think you’ve committed.”

  And Ramiel’s stony face never moved.

  His heart wasn’t in his chest. His heart was there, at the table, with Malphas’s cruel hand gripping hard. Hero’s stomach gave a lurch, and he was only mildly aware when Claire hauled him back and shook him, hard. “Hero, look at me.”

  “Rami—” Hero lurched, and was stunned at Claire’s strength as she used his momentum to spin him around instead. Her chin was set and tense, eyes shining with pain. Good. If she would betray them, if she would just sell off those who loved her like chips on a table, if . . .

  Claire wouldn’t do any of those things. The dissonance was what finally split Hero’s heart in two. “How could . . . Why, Claire? Why?”

  He saw the question hit her like a slap. Her eyes were wet and furious. “Fine. Make me the monster. Hate me if you want, Hero. But listen to me. Remember what you swore before we came.”

  Hero’s chest felt strung tight as a bowstring. But he’d run out of ammunition. He cast one glance back at Rami, but he had already diverted his gaze to Malphas and the court. His hope deflated. “I’ll listen, warden.” He felt the dull anger stinging his eyes as he glared at her. “One last time, I’ll be your leashed dog. But after we walk out those doors, we are done.”

  36

  CLAIRE

  Hell is not the place for matters of the heart, and the Library is no place for frivolity. Don’t let passing whims ruin a good index.

  Apprentice Librarian Yoon Ji-Han, 1818 CE

  Forgive my language, Librarian, but what the hell? The Library is made up of nothing but passion. What books have you been reading?

  Librarian Gregor Henry, 1819 CE

  It was a marvel that the boat did not sink under the simmering accusation Hero brought in with him. Claire hated herself when he would not meet her eyes, but when he finally did, the betrayal was a stab in the gut. It wasn’t that it wasn’t well deserved, Claire knew that. But it was that she’d gotten out of practice. Once, she’d deserved those looks. Once, the extent of Claire and Hero’s relationship was a perverse argument in the language of betrayal. Warden and book, human and idea. He must think that was what she had defaulted to now, for this. After all this.

  Claire silently cursed herself again for allowing Hero to tag along. She should have seen that coming. She should have ensured he was occupied with work for the damsels when she, Rami, and Andras had departed. Sloppy. She used to be better at this.

  The thought didn’t bring her any comfort.

  The doors closed behind them; the dam broke. “We can’t leave him—” Hero started pleadingly.

  Claire made a silencing motion that brooked no argument. Miraculously, it worked. She perched at the end of the hull and remained still and composed as Hero slunk in after Andras and silently took up one of the oars. She could still feel eyes on them as they pushed away from the flooded hallway. Malphas had spies all up and down this route, of course. She’d kept her silence on the way in, but the way out seemed to stretch interminably as Hero hunched his shoulders and rowed. Only a fictional character could successfully turn rowing into a study in angst. He attacked the task with mechanical ferocity, a mortally wounded beast ready to strike out at the nearest obstacle—in this case, the murky water.

  The silence held for a time before Hero’s voice broke. “You abandoned him.”

  Claire squeezed her eyes closed. “Hero—”

  “You just traded him like he was nothing. He served you faithfully. We . . . He loved you—” Hero’s voice wobbled. He didn’t look up, didn’t stop rowing, but his hunched shoulders hitched higher. “We all knew how hard it was for Rami to face Hell again. It tore him up inside but he did it—for us, for you. And then you sold him to those jackals like a piece of meat.”

  “That’s not what—”

  “Don’t defend yourself!” The oar paused out of the water and Hero clenched it in his fists as he stood, throwing the boat into a precarious wobble even as they continued to drift. “Rami wasn’t—isn’t—like you and me, Claire. Rami is good. He could have destroyed us whenever he wanted—every other immortal creature we meet in this goddamn place is a bastard, you will recall. But not Rami. From the start Rami has been good. He is patient and kind and against all gods-damn odds he fell in love with you—with me, I . . .” Hero’s voice was beyond a crack. It threatened to dissolve, but he wasn’t ready to let Claire off without verbalizing her crimes. “Ramiel is the best of both of us. He would have died for us and you just . . . used him. You used all of us like we were nothing and—” Hero stopped short, flinching back with a shake of his head.

  Only the slosh of thick water against the hull punctuated the silence. Hero sat frozen in the center of the boat as he stared at Claire as if he couldn’t recognize her. Neither spared a glance for Andras, sitting still as stone between them. It took Claire time to speak around the knot of self-loathing in her voice. “You are right. All of it. I am not good, never was.”

  Hero’s expression crumbled into pain. “Claire, it’s Rami. Turn the boat around, we have to go back and—”

  “Three more meters, Hero. Trust me for three more meters. That’s all I ask of you.” Claire studied her hands, then looked up to hold his gaze. It was a request—Claire had no illusion about
her ability to steer the boat on her own. “Then I’ll be whatever monster you deem me.”

  It was a cruel thing to ask. Hero’s lip curled as an interior war raged. His sword hand trembled before he twitched a nod. “Three. Damned. Meters.”

  There was no more to be said. Hero’s eyes challenged her to look away, so Claire didn’t dare. The air had turned less briny as Hell waters gave over to the flooded stacks of the Library. Still, Claire didn’t move until the shadow of the Library’s great doors fell over the boat. “All right. Go ahead. That should be far enough.”

  Hero tilted his head, confused, until a blur of shadow and feathers spun between them. The shadow moving across the boat passed over Andras and left behind Ramiel, whole and sitting in the boat between them, in his place as the illusion swept away. He looked nearly as pained as Hero had, but the stricken look was colored with an air of wonder as he looked between Hero and Claire.

  A strangled sound clawed its way out of Hero’s throat. Claire hadn’t thought it possible to strike Hero speechless. But amusement quickly passed as she caught the expression on his face. His misery melted into shock, which then melted in the furnace of something much darker and harder. Claire backpedaled as he rose to his feet. She was too familiar with Hero to be scared of him, but the intensity of his gaze made her . . . well, nervous. “Hero, I’m sorry, but it was a tactical decision—”

  Claire didn’t quite believe it when Hero reached out and, with a graceful push, tilted her over the side of the boat.

  The water wasn’t cold, precisely, but Claire still got out a yelp as it folded over her head. Her feet hit the bottom after a short dive and she pushed off, bobbing to the surface and coughing up most of a wave’s worth of water. The water must have been clear of any harmful ink or residue, because she felt fine if sputtering furious.