by A J Hackwith
“Claire.”
The hoarse voice arrested her steps. Hero had propped himself up on the ground and made attempts to bunch his coat over the worst wounds. Black ink spread too fast between his fingers. His face was swollen and blackened on one side, but the undamaged part of his mouth curved into a familiar, bitter-edged smile. He shifted, grimacing as he did, and pushed his sword. It skittered across the floor to stop at Claire’s feet.
Claire took the weapon and found her heart in her throat, wondering how much pain he could survive without a book to repair back to. The question must have bled onto her face. Hero waved her on. “Go. End this.”
Claire clutched the sword to her chest, turned, and ran into the stacks.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
THE STACKS HAD BECOME narrow ravines of shadow. Between the fighting and the fire, the globes that had so reliably lit dark corners were gone. The deeper Claire went, the less the damage, these shelves being more removed from the initial battle. Only a few jostled books scattered the aisles. She could just see the retreating flutter of Andras’s coat as it threatened to disappear at the far end of the aisle.
He wanted her to follow him. Would have some trap in mind. But Claire just wanted this over.
Her knee protested as she ran, slowing her down. A wheeled ladder leaned against the shelves to the right, and she leapt, landing on it with her full weight to send the ladder flying. A few kicks picked up speed, and Claire could see the back of Andras’s head clearly now. She was gaining on him.
Then he disappeared around the corner at the end of the row. The ladder hit the end of the track, and a black blade swept out at chest level. Claire flung off the ladder, barely avoiding the wicked edge as it bit into the wood.
She landed hard on her hip and slid across the polished floor. When she came up, Andras had his dagger free but was still.
“Whatever happened to ‘I could never hurt you, pup’?” Claire hissed. She slid Hero’s sword from its sheath and held it out unsteadily. Her hands were trembling something awful. She was a librarian. She knew next to nothing about swordplay or fighting. She hadn’t had the heart to tell Hero that.
The corner of Andras’s lips twitched. “I said I could never kill you. I would never lie to you, pup. This?” The dagger swayed in his hand. “A single piece of soul stone. Didn’t do much to Hero earlier, but the soul of the book isn’t in the paper, is it? It’s high time yours took a rest, Claire. You’ve earned it, though it needn’t have been this way.”
They were deep in the bowels of the stacks, and the sounds of fighting were muted. The smoke had disappeared. Hopefully that meant Brevity had the fire damage under control. Claire edged around the demon. “Rubbish. You planned all this. I know what you did to Leto.”
Matthew. Claire cradled his real name in her chest, pressed under her heart. She wouldn’t forget it. She’d forgotten many things, but she would not forget Leto.
Andras tilted his head. He backed up a step and Claire followed, not willing to let him run again. “Finally put that together, did you? Frankly, I’d hoped you two would have that reunion sooner. You always were adopting strays, pup. I gave you a real one.”
“You killed him, and you think I should be grateful?” Incredulity gave way to fury. Andras raised his blade in warning.
“The boy killed himself. I just greased the rails as a gift to you. I hoped having him around would make you happy. Soften you, make you more open to new opportunities. I needed you. I knew the codex was out there, but that damned city was warded. I needed a tracker, and a stubborn one. We could have worked together.”
Claire’s lip curled, though the disgust felt reserved for herself. So many deaths at her feet. Leto, the damsels and demons. Beatrice? No. Claire shook her head. “How in the world did I ever consider you a friend?”
Andras sounded sad. “You used me just as much. It’s what friends do.”
Andras hadn’t moved. He wasn’t retreating, but he wasn’t pressing his obvious advantage either. Claire frowned, risking a glance from him to the shelves and back. He traced her suspicion and his smile grew. He rested a possessive hand on a shelf. “Since we’re in the business of reunions today . . .”
Claire narrowed her eyes; then ice raced down her spine. The name was stamped in small gilded letters on the spines of the books under his fingers: CLAIRE JUNIPER HADLEY.
Her books.
She hadn’t realized they were so deep in the Library.
Her books were not part of the main collection. After what had happened with Beatrice, she’d gathered up all the unwritten books bearing her name and archived them in the most obscure corner of the Library, tucked them between books whose authors had died thousands of years ago. She’d told herself it wasn’t for herself but for the books. Beyond her temptation, surrounded by ancient and satisfactorily sleeping books. She allowed herself to pretend it was merely a side benefit that she never had to be reminded of her past failures.
Even now the temptation was still there. Her hands itched, ached to reach out to touch, to thumb over the pages. She might have forgotten so much of her past life, but her stories—the stories never faded. Unspent words stayed, like ink in the blood. She felt cold and hot at once, hollow with the ghosts she carried.
Andras watched her reaction with growing pity. “I always do my research. It took some time for my men to find where you’d tucked them. I thought I taught you better, Claire. The first rule of the game is a simple one: never keep a secret that can be used against you.”
Claire’s mouth felt dry. She dragged her eyes away from the shelves. “Funny words for a creature that does nothing but lie.”
“Two different beasts: deception and secrets. Deceptions are when you lie to others; secrets are when you lie to yourself.” Andras made an impatient motion, waving his blade over the shelves. “We could debate virtues all day, but I know you, pup. Shame to let such an impressive collection of books go to waste.”
The blade spun in his hand, and the black tip brushed against a green-bound book. It left a smear of ink: Hero’s blood. It gleamed wet for a moment before the ink ignited. Claire flinched and bit back a cry as black flames flared and the book fell to ash.
“Step down, Librarian,” Andras said.
There was a nib of leather in the ashes, a fleck of gold. Claire tried to turn away, but her gaze locked on a scrap of shadow drifting from the shelf. It was a portion of paper, entirely turned to ash but held together, for a breath of a moment, as if it hadn’t forgotten how to be a page. Darker striations of ash marched across the middle—the ink. She could almost make out a snippet of a paragraph, and the laconic, cold voice of the historian told her, from the back of her mind, that she would be the last soul to read these words. A sob hiccuped in her throat, and the puff of air was enough: the ash page dissolved between her outstretched fingers.
The destruction of a book was a shame, but the grief that suffocated her all at once wasn’t for a book. It was for people: like Hero, like Beatrice. God, she’d been every kind of fool. Her voice felt ash-choked. “I buried them because I wanted to forget them. Why would I care what you do?”
“I don’t think that’s true.” Andras turned a prospective gaze over Claire’s collection. “Which book do you think that was, now? A random adventure, a romance? Your one moment of genius? I’ve already met your idea of a hero—quite crude, by the way. So terse, so unlikable. Better that woman never got written. But I’m sure in one of these you dreamed up your ideal love too. Do you think you memorialized your beloved family somewhere, since you couldn’t be bothered to remember yourself? Is there a story there for your daughter? Perhaps this one.”
At a word, another book folded into char and soot.
“Just as well.” Andras tutted. “They obviously didn’t try to remember you.”
It wasn’t her forgotten daughter he was destroying, an
d Andras knew it. Her daughter was a human who had lived and grown old. Andras was killing the lives trapped between pages here, innocent lives. Lives that relied on the Library for protection.
“You can’t win, Andras.” Claire’s voice trembled. She breathed through her nose and it felt like screaming.
“Oh?” The blade paused in Andras’s hand. He tapped his bottom lip. “Do you think you’ll just wish me away, like you did Gregor? I’m a demon. Hell is my very nature. Your ‘words’ won’t work on me.”
“I won’t need them to stop you.” Claire swallowed. The fear stuck beneath her collarbone. “Your Horrors will be eliminated by Arlid’s ravens. I’ve turned your own wing’s collection against you. Lucifer is never going to grant you your title again after such a defeat. What can you hope to gain with this? You’re never a sadist without reason.”
“Call it a morbid curiosity to see just how much of your past you’ll ascribe to the fire. That’s what I liked best about you, Claire. You were so selfish, so human.” Andras’s gold gaze was bright as a coin and twice as greedy, but it wasn’t cold. It simmered with regret, which was worse. Claire caught the moment when he steeled himself for an act. “Did you ever wonder why I call you pup?”
“I assumed fatherly affection, but that’s obviously wrong.”
“When I found you, you were a whining puppy. Broken, grieving your silly books. Like a kicked dog. Would have rolled over and played dead for anyone. I took you in. I kept you safe.” His words curled, tipping over into a snarl. “You owe your station to me. You owe me this. I know you kept the scrap. Smart girl, but you burned that up getting in here, didn’t you? I admit I had to do a bit of the same. Tragedy, but I . . .” He patted one pocket. “I had just enough to spare. With the Uwritten Wing in hand, I can trade the rest of these for enough power to challenge Lucifer himself, if I so desire.”
“You can burn the Library, but you won’t possess it,” Claire said, and she blinked, realizing the truth of it. It gave her the strength to raise her chin. “Brevity and I will resist you with everything.”
“And that’s why I have this.” Andras flipped the blade over in his hands. Claire realized the black surface gleamed not like metal but like polished crystal. “Good-bye, pup.”
The blade moved at her, fast and glinting like a minnow in water. Claire threw the sword in front of her as she stumbled back, using it more as a shield than a riposte. Andras flicked his wrist and turned the movement against her. The sword wrenched out of her hands and flew down the aisle.
Andras stopped, sighing as she clutched her bruised wrist. “This just isn’t fair. I knew I should have taught you swordplay.” He moved again, taking advantage of her reaction to kick her solidly in the gut. Claire crumpled to the floor, breath seizing in her lungs. She felt Andras stop behind her, a cold shadow. He was toying with her. Andras would win any fight, fair or otherwise.
Claire understood it then. She stayed on her knees.
“Hear me,” Claire whispered, words lost to the floorboards. “Hear me, please. I have done my best, but we need you now. If you ever had power, if you ever cared about this place and those in it, please, I need you now.”
Andras heaved a long sigh. A toe nudged her spine. “Praying? I’m disappointed in you. Even if Lucifer was the worshipping type, he’s abandoned you. I thought you were better than cheap begging.”
“Please,” Claire breathed. She leaned against a shelf of books. The leather was cool against her cheek. Nothing stirred beneath it. She squeezed her eyes shut with effort. “This isn’t how the story ends. Not yours.” Hers, perhaps. But hers wasn’t the only story inked in the bones of Hell.
The whispers, when they came, were nothing more than a soft hush of wind. Claire opened her eyes and turned.
Andras still held a disappointed frown, dagger out as if he was waiting for his fancy to take him. His gaze stumbled, catching on something just over Claire’s shoulder. She held very still. She felt the figures at her back, dozens of them. No, not dozens.
Hundreds.
And she knew the books were awake.
Books woken up after a long, very long, sleep. Heroes and villains and damsels and knights. Monsters and rogues and saints and madmen. Books and stories and characters and conflicts from ages long past, furies and passions honed over an eon to a killing edge. Aliens and monsters and queens and mercenaries and children. They crowded the hall behind her and clung to shelves; those with wings and tails crowded overhead. Dozens, hundreds, more. The weight of the wakened Library balanced, heavy and infinite, in the air.
They didn’t bother with the niceties of dimensional physics. Out of the corner of her eye, feet flickered against the floorboards. Boots turned to hooves turned to heels turned to soft shadow. The only thing constant was the weight, the weight of a million gazes on her back. The pressure was like a great wave, obliterating and terrible. And when it turned its gaze on Andras, a tremor shook through the demon’s shoulders. His hand fell to his side, and Andras began to back up. Claire felt the pull of the tide of old stories, hungry ghosts, and dug her knuckles into the floor. It was all she could do not to lose herself with it.
Andras’s voice was haughty but unsteady. “I’m the Arcanist, Grand Duke of Hell. You can’t—”
“We can.” The words came to Claire’s lips, like grave dust. “We are the dreams that did not die with the dreamer. We care nothing for the dark.”
“Nonsense. I’m a demon! I can offer you freedom, escape, power beyond imagination.”
“We are imagination.”
Air rushed out of the aisle, sucking Claire’s breath with it. When she felt the first figure pass her, like a trace of frost over her skin, the prudent thing would have been to close her eyes. There were things human minds weren’t meant to comprehend, and Claire felt her own mind pressed, spread too thin. But she’d called this. She’d asked, and the Library had answered. She’d woken them up. All of them. She ground her hands against the wood until her nails splintered, and she looked up.
Andras backed into a wall, shoulders hunched, with his dagger out. Not in a proficient pose like before, but sweeping, searching for a target. Figures coalesced in the air between them, like a mist swirling on a current. His blade passed through the chest of the nearest figure. It parted like water and then, instead of disintegrating, the figure solidified and power spread like a ripple. Andras’s eyes were gold-and-black cat eyes, all human traces gone, when they found hers and caught.
“You’re not a murderer, pup. Have mercy. You know me. We could have—”
A dark-skinned woman, ageless and terrifying as the dawn, appeared out of the shadows at Andras’s back. A rush of power and a spike of light forced Claire to squeeze her eyes shut. When she opened them, empty air hung where Andras had stood.
The dagger clattered to the hardwood, loud as Claire’s pulse. It was no longer black, but as silver as Andras’s hair, with a tiger stripe of faintly glowing amber.
Claire took an unsteady breath, realizing too late that the ghost woman’s attention was now on her. Her starless black eyes gained weight, as if feeding from the judgment. Claire tried, with the parts of her mind that weren’t screaming, to identify her. The woman didn’t seem like one of Claire’s own characters, or any damsel that had appeared in the past. This wasn’t a character that had ever woken up under Claire’s care, perhaps had never woken up. This was a character from an old book, breathtakingly old, a book conceived when characters such as this were not women, but forces, faces of the gods.
That gaze held Claire immobile, and pressed down like stone. It saw every fleck of ash on her cheeks, the smoke heavy in her hair, every callous disregard she’d ever had. It saw the ink that stained her fingers, time and time again, and measured her life in cruelties. Somewhere distant, she could hear Brevity’s high voice calling her name. They were looking for her now.
But the Library had alr
eady found her. The Library would not bring the others here until it was done with her.
Andras had been asking the wrong person for mercy. The mercies of the Library were dust and silence. She was caught in a sea of ghosts, a trap with jaws of ink and bone. The pulse of dreams beat at her skin, pressing in, and hundreds of hungering eyes palmed at her soul. Tasting, testing, finding it wanting. The accusation was there. The accusation and weight of every book that’d burned today. Claire distantly wondered which faces in the crowd were of her creation.
All seemed equally judging, but that was familiar.
The woman in front drew toward her. Claire felt locked in place, but dragged a word from her throat. “Wait.”
It was only a shred of a whisper, but the specter paused. Claire swallowed and tasted iron. “You have a right to be angry. Give me a chance to fix it. I—” She distantly heard Brevity’s voice again. “We can fix this. I might have failed you, each of you, but the Library wasn’t abandoned today. You had no shortage of champions. You are the Library; we are the librarians. Let us serve.”
Stories end. The words nearly split Claire’s skull. She winced. The woman at the fore drifted toward her, hair suddenly white, fire instead of shadow.
“Yes. And that’s my fault. Only mine.” Claire struggled to breathe. “Please. I’ll accept what I must do to make amends.”
The woman was as still as a statue, and she considered.
41
RAMIEL
There is no apology for my acts. We have a choice, all of us, in seeing the world and system we participate in. At some point, we are confronted with the cost. What suffers for happiness. What dies for life. Even Caesar couldn’t keep such a thing hidden, the blood that waters an empire’s soil. You have a choice. You can choose to close your eyes and enjoy your lucky position on the good earth. You can choose to walk away.