by Scott Lynch
“Aspirant Vrana,” said Astriza. She had come up behind Laszlo, so quietly that he hadn’t heard her approach. “Casimir. Are you sure you don’t want to talk about this?”
“My intentions could hardly be clearer, Librarian Mezaros.”
“Casimir,” she said, “I urge you to reconsider this course of action, before—”
“Before what? Before I do what you people should have done a thousand years ago when this place bucked the harness? Stay back, Librarian, or I’ll weave a death for you before you can even conjure. I’ve seen your magic. You know you can’t throw hard enough to take me. Look on the bright side… anything is possible once this is done. I mean, I’m not a bad person! The High University and I could reach an accommodation! I could offer you so much!”
“What about me, Caz?” Laszlo threw his tattered cloak aside and placed a hand on the hilt of his sword. “Would you slay me, if I tried to stop you?”
“Interesting question, Laszlo. Would you really pull that thing on me?”
“Five years! I thought we were friends!” The sword came out in a silver blur, and Laszlo shook with fury.
“You could have gone on thinking that if you’d just left me alone for a few minutes! You’re a decent enough fellow, and you did me a good turn this afternoon. I already said I was sorry.”
“Step out of the circle, Casimir. Step out, or decide which one of us you have time to kill before we can reach you.”
“Laszlo, even for someone as mildly magical as yourself, you disappoint me. I said I checked your sword personally this morning, didn’t I?”
Casimir snapped his fingers, and Laszlo’s sword wrenched itself from his grasp so quickly that it scraped the skin from most of his knuckles. Animated by magical force, it whirled in the air and thrust itself firmly against Laszlo’s throat. He gasped. The razor-edge that had slashed vocabuvore flesh like wet parchment was pressed firmly against his windpipe, and a modicum of added pressure would drive it in.
“Now,” shouted Casimir, “Indexers, out! If anyone else comes in, if I am interfered with, or knocked unconscious or by any means further annoyed, my enchantment on the sword will slice this aspirant’s head off.”
The blue-robed indexers withdrew from the room in a quick but disciplined manner, and the heavy door clanged shut behind them.
“Astriza,” said Casimir, “somewhere in this room is the master index book, the one updated by the enchantments. Bring it to me now.”
“Casimir,” said the Librarian, “It’s still not too late.”
“How will you write up Laszlo’s death in your report? ‘Regretfully unavoidable?’ Another cleanup job for the night staff? Bring me the damn book.”
“As you wish,” she said coldly. She moved to a nearby table, and returned with a thick volume, two feet high and nearly as wide.
“Simply hand it over,” said Casimir. “Don’t touch the warding paint.”
She complied, and Casimir ran his right hand over the cover of the awkwardly large volume, cradling it against his chest with his left arm.
“Well then, Laszlo,” he said, “This is it. All the information collected by the index enchantments is sorted in the master books like this one. My little alterations will reverse the process, making this a focus for me to reshape all of this chaos to my own liking.”
“Casimir,” said Laszlo, “Please—“
“Hoist a few for me tonight, if you live through whatever happens next. It’s time I moved past such things.”
He flipped the book open, and a pale silvery glow rippled up from the pages he selected. Casimir took a deep breath, raised his right hand, and began to intone the words of a spell.
Things happened very fast then. Astriza moved, but not against Casimir— instead she hit Laszlo, taking him completely by surprise with an elbow to the chest. As he toppled backward, she slipped her right arm past his face, slamming her leather-armored limb against Laszlo’s blade before it could shift positions to follow him. The sword fought furiously, but Astriza caught the hilt in her other hand, and with all of her strength managed to lever it into a stack of encyclopedias, where it stuck quivering furiously.
At the same instant, Casimir started screaming.
Laszlo sat up, rubbing his chest, shocked to find his throat uncut, and he was just in time to see the thing that erupted out of the master index book, though it took his mind a moment to properly assemble the details. The silvery glow of the pages brightened and flickered, like a magical portal opening, for that was exactly what it was—a portal opening horizontally like a hatch rather than vertically like a door.
Through it came a gleaming, segmented black thing nearly as wide as the book itself, something like a man-sized centipede, and uncannily fast. In an instant it had sunk half-a-dozen hooked foreclaws into Casimir’s neck and cheeks, and then came the screams, the most horrible Laszlo had ever heard. Casimir lost his grip on the book, but it didn’t matter—the massive volume floated in midair of its own accord while the new arrival did its gruesome work.
With Casimir’s head gripped firmly in its larger claws, it extended dozens of narrower pink appendages from its underside, a writhing carpet of hollow, fleshy needles. These plunged into Casimir’s eyes, his face, his mouth and neck, and only bare trickles of blood slid from the holes they bored, for the thing began to pulse and buzz rhythmically, sucking fluid and soft tissue from the body of the once-handsome aspirant. The screams choked to a halt. Casimir had nothing left to scream with.
Laszlo whirled away from this and lost what was left of his long-ago breakfast. By the time he managed to wipe his mouth and stumble to his feet at last, the affair was finished. The book creature released Casimir’s dessicated corpse, its features utterly destroyed, a weirdly sagging and empty thing that hung hollow on its bones and crumpled to the ground. The segmented monster withdrew, and the book slammed shut with a sound like a thunderclap.
“Caz,” whispered Laszlo, astonished to find his eyes moistening. “Gods, Caz, why?”
“Master Molnar hoped he wouldn’t try it,” said Astriza. She scuffed the white circle with the tip of a boot and reached out to grab the master index book from where it floated in mid-air. “I said he showed all the classic signs. It’s not always pleasant being right.”
The exterior door opened. The indexers returned, unhurried, and resumed their former tasks without so much as a glance at the moist husk of Casimir Vrana.
“The book was a trap,” said Laszlo.
“Well, the whole thing was a trap, Laszlo. We know perfectly well what sort of hints we drop in the introductory materials, and what a powerful sorcerer could theoretically attempt to do with the index enchantments.”
“I never even saw it,” muttered Laszlo.
“And you think that makes you some sort of failure? Grow up, boy, grow up. It just makes you well-adjusted! There’s no fault in not spending months of your life planning a way to seize more power than any mortal can sanely command. Look, every once in a while, a place like the High University is bound to get a student with excessive competence and a shortage of scruples, right?”
“I suppose it must,” said Laszlo. “I just… I never would have guessed my own chambers-mate…”
“The most dangerous sort. The ones that make themselves obvious can be dealt with almost at leisure. It’s the ones that can disguise their true nature, get along socially, feign friendships… those are much, much worse. The only real way to catch them is to leave sufficient rope lying around so they can knot their own nooses.”
“Merciful gods.” Laszlo retrieved his sword and slid it into the scabbard for what he hoped would be the last time that day. “What about the body?”
“Library property. Some of the grimoires in here are bound in human skin. Only one way to repair them properly.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Waste not, want not.”
“But his family—“
“Won’t get to know. Because he vanished in an unf
ortunate magical accident just after you turned and left him in here, didn’t he?”
“I… damn. I don’t know if I can—“
“The alternative is disgrace for him, disgrace for his family, and a major headache for everyone who knew him, not excluding his chambers-mate for the last five years.”
“The indexers will just play along?”
“This has happened before. Besides, the indexers see what they’re told to see. They know the stakes when it comes to matters of library security.
“It just seems incredible,” said Laszlo. “To stand here and hide everything about his real fate, as casually as you’d shelve a book.”
“Who around here casually shelves a book?”
“Good point.” Laszlo sighed and held his hand out to Astriza. “I suppose, then, that Casimir vanished in a magical accident just after I left him in here.”
“Congratulations on passing your fifth-year exam, Laszlo. Rely on us to handle all the necessary details.” She gave his hand a firm, friendly shake. “It’s the life of a librarian. What are we for, if not for keeping things hushed?”
###
About the Author
Scott Lynch was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1978, the first of three brothers. Early in life he worked as a dishwasher, a waiter, a graphic designer, an office manager, a prep cook, and a game supplement self-publisher before accidentally selling his first novel in 2004. From 2005 – 2016 Scott served as a paid-on-call firefighter in St. Croix County, Wisconsin, before moving to Massachusetts. There he resides with his second wife, award-winning SF/F novelist Elizabeth Bear, along with three cats (Duncan, Gurney, and Molly) and a fluffy elderly dog (Ace).
Novels by Scott Lynch
The Lies of Locke Lamora
The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book One
Available wherever novels are sold (in both print and e-book editions), the Gentleman Bastard sequence offers colorful, bloody, vulgar, humorous, and emotionally involving tales of people living by their wits in a world of intricate cultures, eerie mysteries, and low magic.
An orphan’s life can be harsh in the sweltering, cosmopolitan city of Camorr. Sold into a life of crime, Locke and his closest friends are trained in disguise and deception before launching their own careers as confidence tricksters. At the height of their success, the underworld of Camorr is shaken to its foundations by the coming of a mysterious antagonist known as the Gray King, whose murderous plans are backed by sorcery. Caught up in the Gray King’s game, Locke must fight for his life with every ounce of desperate wit at his disposal. Nominated for the World Fantasy Award.
Red Seas Under Red Skies
The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Two
Fleeing the fallout of the bloody affair with the Gray King, Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen go to ground far to the west, in the grand island city of Tal Verrar. There they plot an elaborate casino heist to restore their lost fortune. Not all old scores are settled, however, and they soon find themselves enmeshed in a scheme to reshape the politics of Tal Verrar and set the entire Sea of Brass on a course for war. Their journey will take them out across the waves, to the lawless haven of Port Prodigal, where they must keep their plans rolling even while fighting for their lives as reluctant members of a pirate crew.
The Republic of Thieves
The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Three
Locke Lamora has been poisoned, and his only chance to live is to accept employment in the service of a group he would gladly murder with his bare hands—the Magi of Karthain. Posing as hired consultants, Locke and Jean must deploy every dirty trick in their arsenal in an effort to rig the seemingly genteel elections in the city-state of Karthain. Their situation becomes immeasurably more complicated when they discover that their opposition is Locke’s old flame, Sabetha Belacoros, a con artist trained to their own standards and intimately familiar with their every weakness. A New York Times and USA Today Best-Seller.